


You should have let him sleep

by squire



Category: Sherlock (TV), Star Trek Into Darkness - Fandom, Star Trek The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, BAMF John, Deltans, Epic Friendship, Feels, Gen, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan as it should be done, Treklock, Wherein I take liberties with the Genesis mechanism, but it takes warp factor six of squinting, cliffhanger torture, johnlock if you squint, revenge is a dish best served cold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-07-04
Packaged: 2017-12-16 13:30:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 22,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squire/pseuds/squire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, you have to sleep for over two centuries to save your best friend. <br/>Sometimes, it looks like they should just have let you sleep. <br/>John Watson wakes to a world where Sherlock no longer exists. He fight against all odds to redeem the man who became of him.</p><p>
  <i>“John Watson is dead. Over two hundred years,” Khan bit on the words as if he could revise the reality according to what he believed.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Look who’s speaking.” John didn’t want to feed the feeling of betrayal brought by the knowledge that Sherlock faked his death and never let him know– he was skating on thin ice right there, no need for emotional outbursts. He only said: “At least, I attended your funeral.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Birth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [am1thirteen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/am1thirteen/gifts).



> You have to thank for this story to am1thirteenth - after she saw STiD, she became so besotted with Khan (typical symptom of severe case of cumberbatchiosis, I'm afraid:)) that she asked me to write a crossover with Sherlock. And because she asked very nicely, I yielded.
> 
> Though I am aware that there are now loads of Sherlock/STiD crossovers, I hope this one would be a bit different. It's in fact Sherlock/The Wrath of Khan crossover. If you haven't seen the original Wrath of Khan, don't worry. (But go and see it, seriously. Montalbán's Khan is a VILLAIN.)

Chapter one: **The birth**

Beta'ed by the irresistible [](http://am1thirteenth.livejournal.com/profile)[**am1thirteenth**](http://am1thirteenth.livejournal.com/) and improved after the kind suggestions of [](http://rrane.livejournal.com/profile)[**rrane**](http://rrane.livejournal.com/). Please check the Author's Note at the end of the chapter.  
.  
.  
.  
  
A man, whose name is no longer Sherlock Holmes, stands in front of a mirror regarding his reflection carefully, flicking his gaze between it and an old photograph in his hand.

It’s not a portrait, merely a snapshot. A moment in a press conference, two men standing forth, exposed to the flashlights. One of them is tall, wearing a Byronic dark coat and a definitely mismatched deerstalker hat. It’s a comic figure, in fact, which the man is clearly aware of and not necessarily comfortable with, judging from the forced smile on his face.

One Sherlock Holmes. He remembers him growing up, learning, living, succeeding in small battles and failing in the one war that mattered. He remembers Holmes’ supposed death on the pavement before St. Bartholomew's hospital. He even remembers the metaphysical death when the old, burdened, flawed personality gave way to him.

Then there is the shorter man with sandy hair, looking at his companion with a fond expression in his grey-blue eyes, smiling sympathetically, his stance and incline of his head expressing a degree of attachment that was clear to anybody save for himself.

Fondness. Affection. Friendship.

Those are the emotions that he no longer employs, and that are to be avoided in the future. His emotional core is no longer capable of such fine-scaled, complex ornaments of feelings. They are not powerful enough to counterbalance his impatient, imperious intelligence. All he can do is burn. Deepest devotion that knows no limits on one side and utter contempt bordering on flaring hatred on the other. Between those, there is neither space nor peace.

“Perfect.”

He shifts his gaze back to the mirror. Another man is leaning on the doorframe, almost as tall as he is. He recalls his name immediately. Mycroft Holmes. For all their purposes he could be well called one of his fathers.

“Perfected,” the man who now bears the name Noonien Singh corrects the visitor.

“Perfect for our plans,” the visitor stands his ground. His air is cautious and indifferent, but Noonien Singh can see through the restraints, he can observe the exact degree of this man’s anxiety and how it was relieved ever so slightly upon hearing his answer. _My voice hasn’t changed_ , he deduces from it.

Lots of other things have. He can list them as he watches the other man examining him, eyes raking swiftly down and up. The body of Sherlock Holmes used to be lean and boney. The augmentation has added four inches round his chest and the elastic fabric of his shirt is punctuating the perfect musculature. His prominent cheekbones are somewhat rounded now, giving him a matured, older look, but he knows that now he would age more slowly than the man on the photograph would.

“I wonder. Why not you? Your cognitive powers were greater than his.” He observes and files away the minute shiver, almost imperceptible stiffening of the visitor’s stance when he interprets the deliberate use of pronoun as a sign of detachment between this new man and his former self.

“Men past forty years of age were considered too old for the change.” Mycroft clears his throat carefully, gathering his resolve to continue.

“I would have chosen no-one else for this project, but I am still sorry for what it has cost you, Sherlock.”

He tries to remember what it was that he has lost. The knowledge is inside his head but there is no feeling associated with it. Did he wish it for himself? Did his former self wish it to be erased, and if so, then why? Did he consider it a threat? Noonien Singh knows that Sherlock used to have fears. He has none. Nothing he experiences is a burden; he can use everything to his advantage. Even the pain.

He weighs his own possibilities, aware of every cell in his body. His former self used to neglect its needs, valuing only the power of his mind. That has changed. This new man is complex, his physical strength is a vibrating potential, his energy coils like a spring. No more puzzles and riddles to entertain only the mind. There is war to be won, lands to be conquered, people to be ruled. His new power is tangible, his brain can stick to purpose, and his body is a perfect tool.

“Why did he agree to this?”

“We had a good argument in our favour.” Mycroft’s eyes linger on the man on the photograph, the one whose smile is genuine.

“There was a motivation in you that only a fool would omit to play upon. You were ready to die – you’ve, figuratively speaking, died to protect his life.”

“So another death was not an issue anymore.”

There is a spark of something older than him in the back of his mind. The idea of someone, threatening the life of his associate, stirs a vaguely unpleasant feeling. Possessiveness?

“You are not dead, brother.” Mycroft tries to insist. Noonien Singh files it away as another display of weakness. Mycroft outstretches his hand in a strangely timid gesture.

He turns to him and his waiting hand, and instead of gripping it with his own, he places the photograph in it.

“Keep him safe. I think your brother would have liked it.”

He walks out of the door, joining a large group of people on their way to board the plane, off to new life, to places where they are needed. They already acknowledge him as the best of them. Some of them even adore him. They call him Khan. A leader.

Those seventy two men and women that went through everything with him, subjected to the same process of augmentation, they are his family now. And no-one is going to threaten _them_. Not if they want to see the light of day again.  
.  
.  
. tbc


	2. The Loss

Chapter 2 -  **The Loss**  
  
Beta'd by the amazing [](http://rrane.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://rrane.livejournal.com/) **rrane**  who really didn't know how short a straw she drew. Thanks a lot!  
  
.  
.  
.  
  
John Watson zipped up the last bag and straightened up, smoothing the lapels of his uniform and casting last glances round the living room of 221B. In the last few years, he couldn’t quite come to terms with the flat being devoid of his friend’s presence and now he was leaving to.  _And long overdue_... he thought.  
  
He had about enough of the dull life in the years after Sherlock’s suicide when he came across the UN’s call for volunteers for their reconstruction teams. It was relatively safe, but close enough to an actual warzone to make John feel the familiar weight of the old dog tags around his neck like a rush of adrenaline.  
  
Mrs. Hudson came in fussing around him in her usual motherly style.  
  
“For this one thing I’ve always been glad that I only had daughters. During the Cold War, I’ve always feared that someday all hell would break loose and I just couldn’t bear the thought of seeing my sons marching away to get killed...” she covered her face with a shaky hand; her voice breaking with sobs. John grabbed her by the shoulders and gently pulled her close.  
  
“I’m not going to get killed,” he assured her soothingly. “Northern India is not such a hotspot as it used to be. The new regime is quite stable and our reconstruction teams should have every support, both from the government and the locals.”  
  
“That’s all very nice,” she didn’t sound too convinced. “Why, only yesterday I heard on the news that they weren’t able to arrest a single one of those tyrants they’d finally thrown down.”  
  
“Well, I certainly won’t be scouring the land for them,” John sighed. “They’re probably holed up in some cave like the bastards back in Afghanistan. They’d rather rot than face courts-martial, I’d say.”  
  
 _After all, history is written by the victorious_ , he reminded himself... _at the beginning of the Asian Wars there was an equal chance_   _of being thought of as a war criminal and of becoming the esteemed founder of a dynasty_.  
  
He kissed his landlady on both cheeks, lifted his bags and run down the stairs. The door snapped shut after him and he drew in a deep breath, feeling strangely free after a very long time.  
  
 _Okay, maybe not so free_ , he scowled at the black limousine that slowed down beside him. Resistance was futile in such cases and soon he found himself engulfed in the posh interior of the car, with Anthea sitting next to him and Mycroft opposite.  
  
“Well,” he cleared his throat, “this hasn’t happened in years. What can you possibly want from me?”  
  
“Your full attention for the present, Doctor Watson,” Mycroft gave him one of his feigned smiles. “This is about Sherlock, you see.”  
  
“How could this...” John started and stopped, narrowing his eyes. Something in the air warned him that with Mycroft, everything is possible.  
  
“You’re going to tell me that Sherlock is not dead.” A slight incline of Mycroft’s head indicated an affirmative.  
  
“Why? How? I  _saw_  him fall...” It took him a while to find his words and when he did, they emerged as a resigned statement: “You’re probably going to tell me that he never fell.”  
  
 “You exceed yourself today, Doctor Watson.” John glared at him, to no effect really, but Mycroft decided to abandon mockery all the same.  
  
“He did it or your own safety. The entire story is somewhat complicated.”  
  
“So he is alive,” John repeated, allowing the fact sink in... _the bastard._  
  
“Partially, yes.”  
  
“How can anyone be alive  _partially_?” John snapped.  
  
“He has adopted a different identity. Two years ago, he subjected himself to a process of genetic augmentation. A process directed to divest him of the usual mental and physical limits of human race.”  
  
“What? Is he a kind of Superman now?” John laughed at the surrealism of the scene – the luxury of leather seats cradling his back while he listened to the fanciest bullshit he ever heard – making him want to ridicule this entire conversation. “Did they soak his bones with  _adamantium_? Does he wear his pants over his trousers now?”  
  
At this point, Anthea giggled. Such a surprising sound coming from her ever–so reserved lips has John actually sobering a bit. Mycroft only quirked his eyebrows and handed over to him a couple of files.  
  
“All of this is classified, of course,” he remarked casually.  
  
“Absolute top secret, I see,” John retorted, still half prepared for someone jumping out with a hidden camera and calling all of this off as a very bad joke. He flipped through the pages carelessly, paying little attention to a series of photographs – though some of the women in them were really worth a second glance – when one caught his eye, causing his heart skip a beat.  
  
It was the full-on portrait of Sherlock. His distinct features stood out sharply in the industrial light, giving him an almost inhuman air. The look in his eyes could only be described as forlorn. John checked the date – eighteen months after the  _Fall._  He closed his eyes tightly against the flood of memories.  
  
“The pre-war development in Asia has been causing a great deal of distress to us.” Mycroft’s voice felt like coming from a great distance.  
  
“You see, all these riots and popular uprisings, there was a pattern. Our Secret Service soon discovered that there was a new force arising from secret eugenic programs, producing charismatic and tremendously capable leaders. It changed the usual ways of war. It personified them. People were not manipulated by some vague ideas; they began to adore concrete individuals. It could lead to dangerous consequences.”  
  
“So you’ve created your own super-warriors?”  
  
The fact that, so far, Mycroft didn’t snap at John’s deliberately provoking choice of words, was a bad sign indeed.  
  
“Our civilized world was in need of someone able to counter-strike; someone better at everything.”  
  
“But what happened? It’s not as if you’ve succeeded in preventing a war. The entire region has been tossed up and down for the last couple of years! Why, even I’m on my way to...” John trailed off, suddenly noticing the surroundings passing by the car. It appeared they were taking him to Heathrow.  
  
Some of the old reserve crept back into Mycroft’s expression, making John immediately suspicious; _was there a mistake a Holmes was unwilling to admit?_  
  
“We underestimated the instability of the region,” he replied dryly. “At some point during the conflicts, democratic movements prevailed. Our  _official_  government, of course, supports these tendencies heartily.” The scoff on his face was unmistakable.  
  
“So you’ve sold your own brother...again. You’ve turned him into a genetic freak to play a piece in your political chess.” John shook his head incredulously. “You know, the very first day I met Sherlock, he told you ‘Not to start a war ‘til he got home’. I never thought that he meant that literally.” The sarcasm finally gave way to anger.  
  
“How could you? He’s your only brother!”  
  
“The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one.” Mycroft stared him down coldly.  
  
“This sounds like a Machiavellian bullshite to me.”  
  
“What is sounds like to  _you_ , Doctor Watson, is completely irrelevant in this matter.”  
  
“Okay – no, really. I’m just a citizen of this country, after all. Not that I could have a vote in the international politics or how do you call it.” John really didn’t want to enter an endless argument over ‘higher interests’ with Mycroft, of all people. He concentrated on the matters at hand.  
  
“But I  _do_  have a vote in everything that concerns Sherlock.”  
  
“Yes, that’s precisely why you’re here at this moment, Doctor.”  
  
John gave up. “Is he all right? I mean, apart from the fact that his brain is probably a size of a planet and he’s been charged with several war crimes so far.”  
  
Mycroft’s expression blanked a bit and John could swear there was something behind those pale blue eyes that he never associated with the elder Holmes before – something very close to fear.  
  
“No, he’s not all right,” he said softly. “I’m afraid I’ve lost him.”  
  
“He wasn’t captured,” John assured himself.  
  
“Oh, surely not. My brother has taken good precautions of securing his well-being. We have evidence suggesting that his escape was planned carefully and thoroughly. You, as a medical man, might find it interesting that equipment needed to build cryogenic devices was smuggled to India lately; and that he apparently led several inquiries into the abandoned Indian space program.”  
  
“You’re saying...what? That he’s going to escape into space? In a fucking sleeper ship?”  
  
“I’m saying that he probably chose an exile spent in suspended animation,” Mycroft confirmed. Then he bore his eyes into John’s, placing more weight to every word.  
  
“He’s going to survive, but not as a whole man. He’s left something of himself behind; something that he always denied himself to need, something that was, apparently, in your safekeeping, Doctor.”  
  
John opened his mouth for a thousand times rehearsed ‘We’re not a couple’ protest and then shut it again, feeling suddenly very cold.  _Sherlock forfeited his own family. I’m his only friend._  
  
“Where are we heading?” John asked quietly. His steady eyes met with Mycroft’s. The elder Holmes regarded him appreciatively.  
  
“That is, I’m afraid, not the right question,” Mycroft blinked slowly. “The question should be –  _to when_. And as much as it pains me to admit it, Doctor Watson, I honestly do not know.”  
  
Confused, John tried to summon the words for another question, when he felt a sting of a needle up his right arm. For all he could remember, it was the first time he saw Anthea wielding something else than her Blackberry.  
  
Mycroft waited patiently for a few seconds of vain struggle until John Watson’s body slumped bonelessly back on his seat; then he leaned over and tucked a single photograph into his breast pocket.  
  
 _I’m keeping him safe, brother. Safe for your return. For as long as it takes._  
.  
.  
.  
tbc


	3. The Birth

Chapter three - **The Pit**

Beta'ed again by [](http://rrane.livejournal.com/profile)[**rrane**](http://rrane.livejournal.com/) \- few more chapters and I shall be well trained on how to use semi-colons properly; thank you! :)  
.  
.  
.  
  
The floating, disconnected images produced by his gathering mind were disturbed and shattered by a rhythmic, quickening sound, as his consciousness was dragged from deep-sleep _theta_ through dreamy _alpha_ to finally waking _beta_ brain modes; he realized it was the beating of his own heart, too loud for his sensitized ears. He could feel the accelerated blood flow in the tickling of his fingertips and the air inside his lungs felt like acid after so long a time not using them in hibernation chamber. He opened his eyes only a fraction against the too bright light.

“You shouldn’t have woken me up... _again._ ”

He let his voice drop on the last word and it was as good a greeting as the man above him deserved.

Kirk definitely looked older than on their last meeting by some years at least. Khan, on the other hand, hasn’t aged a day. He took in this new impression of James T. Kirk now with some indefinite air of respectability and responsibility that wasn’t in him before… _maybe he finally grew up to fill the Captain’s shoes_. But the quickness of temper was still there, revealing itself in the glinting of light blue eyes, and a good deal of pride was concealed in the way his lips were pressed hard together – _waking me up wasn’t his idea...he’s reluctant to carry out the order but would do it nonetheless. Interesting..._

Dr. McCoy helped him to sit. When he took a look around, he saw the rest of his crew, already revived, crowding at the far end of the room. They appeared so timid and hushed down that it made the tight cordon of armed guards around them look almost excessive. But appearances can be deceitful: Every one of them was worth a tenfold of average humans in strength and fighting skills, and Khan was equally sure that the phasers in guard’s hands were set to kill.

He stepped out of the chamber and had to lean against it for a moment; it was too soon to expect the muscles to work properly. One of his people, a young man, tall, fit, and bearing fair features of a demigod, attempted to take a few steps towards the chamber. When the guards moved to stop him, he lifted his chin daringly; his eyes sought Khan’s face. In a second he recognized the unspoken command in them and withdrew again immediately.

“It’s all right, Joachim. I can manage.” He nodded reassuringly to his loyal companion. Joachim was the youngest of his crew; a brilliant boy when he was changed; and he held fast to their leader with all his heart. His unwavering faithfulness was a trait that Khan particularly approved of; it brought him a sense of warm, comfortable pleasure that could almost fill the cold recesses inside his mind, those corners that used to be inhabited by another loyal man and that were swept clean after his change.

He recovered swiftly and soon was standing on his own; hands clasped behind his back to hide the twitching of his fingers from the residual drugs being slowly washed up from his system.

“So, to what, precisely, do I owe this unexpected pleasure of seeing you again, Captain?”

Kirk waited for the last beep of McCoy’s med scanner, when the Doctor silently nodded that, yes, Khan was perfectly all right; he turned to him. His hands were clenched to fists at his sides, neither of them saw the need to shake hands.  

“It would seem that I owe _you_.”

“History seems to repeat itself,” Khan smiled cryptically. “Do you owe me a fall, Jim?” He drawled the name mockingly, pleased with the parallel. He has won that game; he planned to win this one too.

Kirk seemed to be nonplussed for a moment by the unexpected use of his given name but after a while, judging from his exchange of glances with Dr. McCoy, he’d probably attributed it to Khan’s presumed post-wake dizziness.

“Well, I owe you my life, technically, as it was your blood that has saved me from radiation death. But all my gratefulness is somewhat spoiled by the fact that it was you who caused my death in the first place. So I owe you my death too.”

“Trust me, dear Captain, that death is something that can be well managed by practice.”

“Oh, you would be probably to no ends happy with providing me another experience,” Kirk sneered with another over-confident smile. Khan’s smile grew in response; He would not contradict Kirk. He would not deny his desire to see him dead; his enemy was too clever for such a weak attempt to lull him into false sense of security, but there was no use in provoking him either.

“For the present, I would be contended with hearing what you have to tell me, Captain.”

Instead of an instant answer, Kirk turned towards the door and motioned him to come along. As they walked down the corridors of Enterprise – her design hasn’t changed– his ears searched for the typical background hum of engines. Nothing, yet the ship was definitely moving – no inertia dampers could absorb everything – so they must have been orbiting a planet. His people and the guards followed them in a silent procession.

At last, Kirk started to explain. “What I have to tell you is that the Starfleet finally got fed up with keeping seventy three Pandora boxes forever. And since we are not savages–” Kirk ignored Khan’s murmured ‘What a pity’ and continued– “we won’t simply pull out your plugs; no matter how beneficial for humanity that would be. A decision has been made to offer you a future.”

“Are you aware, Captain, of what happened on the last occasion someone wanted to exploit my talents? Of course you are.” The crushed skull of Admiral Marcus served as a good reminder.

“Don’t worry, we can learn from our mistakes; no, you’ll be allowed to fulfill your chosen fate. Back on Earth, at the end of the Asian Wars, you’ve escaped into permanent exile. And that is what you’ll get.”

They arrived to the main shuttle bay.

“I have found a good place for you. Ceti Alpha V is an M class planet; remote, insignificant, and uninhabited. You and all your people will be transported down together with the cargo of your ship, enough for you to support your life there.”

Kirk carried through the explanation with an air of someone who’d been forced to offer an olive branch. He certainly didn’t believe that a man like Khan would condescend to play a castaway for the rest of his life.

“I don't know if it is to your liking, but you might be pleasantly surprised at the shortage of proper competitors down there. Perhaps you could learn to tolerate the peacefulness, for once, even if it means not employing your full potential–”

“Allow me to correct your perception of me. For a substantial period of time, I have been recognized as the most benign ruler amongst those of my kind. I didn’t start a war until I was attacked.”

“So you’re saying that we are safe from you as long as we leave you alone?”

“ _You_ already _have_ attacked me, Captain.”

Kirk laughed. _Good. Maybe he actually believes in olive branches._

“I’ll give you this: you’re consistent. When something worms its way in to your head, there is just no way out, isn't there?”

“Then I shall advise you to be on your guard against my _consistency_.”

Kirk turned away, pointedly ignoring the warning. People began to move; his crew boarded the shuttles obediently. Khan registered that a couple of pilots have been sent to beam aboard of Botany Bay, his old ship; apparently Kirk was no fool to allow him to navigate it himself. He might attempt to flee into space instead of landing on their destined home.

Khan remained the last one to board and Kirk addressed him one last time: “This planet we give you, Khan, is habitable. Beautiful even, but hostile and treacherous. It will challenge every aspect of your superior abilities. You were designed to tame a continent; do you think you can tame a world?”

“Do you know your Milton, Captain?”

For the first time, Kirk smiled a genuine smile, “I understand.”  
.  
.  
.  
.tbc

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should I be a mean girl, I'd say in a very Sherlockian manner "Do your research" and I'd leave the Milton reference unexplained. But since I can't expect everyone to be such a trekkie as I am, here you go:
> 
> Milton's Paradise Lost: The statement Lucifer made when he fell into the pit: "It is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven."


	4. The Wake

Chapter four - **The Wake.**

again, many thanks to rranne. How she can be so fast and thorough is beyond me.  
.  
.  
  
He was choking. The need for air erased all the indefinable images from before and narrowed his perception to the desperate _now_ ; it deprived him of his senses and left him in the middle of bright nothingness. He felt like having suddenly come to exist, awoken by pain that rippled through his convulsing body, only to die the very next moment. He tried to will his mouth to open, his chest to heave and the intercostal muscles to contract, but his body was not responding – the connection was broken and there was nothing he could do about it. His mind darkened and he fell back into the abyss whence he came.

The next thing that had soaked through the thick layers of dumbness that encased his mind was the sound of hushed voices.

“...oxygen saturation normal. Heart rate elevated; I think you did the right thing with the neurotransmitters, but the dosage...”

“He’s awake.” Soft, smooth fingers wrapped around his hand, bringing to his awareness the fact that he finally had his body connected to his brain– chest, abdomen, limbs, and fingers;  all of which suddenly felt as if dipped in acid and roasted over a small fire. He screwed his face in pain and forced his eyes open.

The most exquisite eyes he had ever seen– he could ever imagine– almond shaped, brightest aquamarine flecked with silver– that regarded him with an unmistakable expression of relief from an unearthly beautiful face. The stately elegance of this woman was even more punctuated with the torturous length of her neck, smooth perfection of her skin, and complete absence of hair on her head which gave her an almost alien, but definitely regal, look.

_I’m in heaven and angels do exist. But wait...heaven shouldn’t hurt so much._

Gritting his teeth against the pain, he managed to lift his head and take a look at his surroundings. Though his eyes were still a bit dazed, he could make out the walls of an irregularly shaped room that seemed carved of rock, an improvised berth that he lay centered in; everything illuminated by an artificial light from outside. Another man, tall and black with rich curly hair, turned and left through a stony passage. The woman standing by his bed gently lowered his head back to the pillow.

“It’s all right, Watson. Rest. You’ve had a nasty fit when we’ve pulled you out; we didn’t know the right procedures for your awakening when your chamber suddenly malfunctioned, so it was make–or–break. I’m glad to see you’ve made it.”

“My...chamber?” _He didn’t remember any chamber. To tell the truth, he didn’t remember much at all. The last thing that stood out clearly was that rather wild party his roommate threw at the occasion of his coming-of-age. Surely..._

“Your hibernation chamber. The technology and materials used indicate pre-First Contact era; we did a quick research and I think that the early twenty-first century would be when you’ve been buried here. There are thousands of questions we would like to ask you and I can understand that you must have questions of your own.”

His mind didn’t seem cooperative enough to pull together anything past the shortest and simplest phrases, so he decided that it would be best to start with them: “Where am I?”

“You’re in the Vale of Kashmir; at the foothills of the Himalayas. One hundred and fifteen meters under, to be correct. We were searching for a cave suitable for our purposes when we found you. Any idea how did you get here?”

He shook his head. _Holy shit. The Himalayas. What’s wrong with London?_ He licked his lips with some effort, afraid of the next question. “What year?”

She drew rather a lengthy breath, as if to give him some time to prepare for what he was about to hear. “Two thousand two hundred and eighty-four.”

John groaned. She flicked her gaze nervously between his face and a small object that lay on a table beside him. _Life function check_...his medicinal instinct told him without even thinking about it.

“What am I even doing here?”

She sighed. “That’s what we hoped we would hear from _you_ , Watson. There were no records, no papers, no files or data media found with you or near you. Only two things: we’ve got your name from these–” She lifted his dog-tags. John frowned at them.

“I don’t remember being in the Army. I studied medicine.”

“These two don’t exclude themselves. You could have been an Army doctor. Does that ring any bell?”

“Nope. I’m sorry. I don’t even know how old I am – how old I was, before I mysteriously skipped almost three hundred years.”

“Our med scan says you’re forty-three. I’d say more, judging solely from your hair, but I am aware that in your century, premature aging was not uncommon. You haven’t led a healthy and peaceful life either.”

“There’s a shot wound in your left shoulder,” she added an explanation when she saw the question on his face. “Well healed, which is a miracle given the almost stone-age state of medicine in your day–”

“Now hang on a minute–” he protested indignantly.

“But then, I’m a mere mathematician, I think that this beeping box knows more about medicine than I do,” she winked at him, indicating the plastic thing that lay on the side table, blinking innocently and obviously able to count down to the last one of John’s grey hairs.

_Forty-three years. That’s not fair. The last he remembered about himself was being still at the Uni. Half of his life gone and he doesn’t even know how he’d deserved to become a fucking time traveler._

He touched his shoulder cautiously, feeling the scar under the fabric of his clothing – some sort of uniform and a washed-out tee. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the feeling to bring back memories – _surely he would remember being shot!_ – but instead, he suddenly saw a chemical laboratory... _bit different from my day..._ felt a pang of pain in his right leg, and heard a deep, rumbling voice of a stranger... _Afghanistan or Iraq?_ And then, nothing, no matter how hard he tried, those images and sounds eluded the grasp of his conscious mind like the shreds of a dream that vanishes the moment you wake.

“And the other thing? You said there were two of them.”

She smiled, obviously pleased with him, and John’s heart unexpectedly quickened its pace. He felt the blush rising up his cheeks and she smiled even more.

“Good! You’re recovering fast. You mustn’t feel embarrassed by your reaction; it’s perfectly normal. My colleagues are already used to the effect of my Deltan pheromones on them; I might resort to suppressants for a while to make you feel more comfortable.”

 _Deltan. Alien. Of course. Twenty-third century. So there’s some chance that the women of Earth are quite normal and not all of them looking, and God, smelling like goddesses of sex._ John wasn’t sure if he could manage such a reality.

“As to your question; here you are.” She produced a small photograph, slightly blanched but still clear enough. “It was in your pocket.”

“That’s me.” He squinted at the picture. _God, how old do I look._

“And the other man? The one with the hat?”

There’s another shred of dream, blurred rooftops... _this way!_...forgotten cane; and then all of it is gone again without making a speck of sense.

“No idea. Looks funny.”

She gave him a thoughtful look as if trying to tie some loose ends.

“Do you think you were fond of him?”

John shrugged hopelessly. “I don’t know. Maybe. Why, that’s my ‘I’m about to have a hell of a laugh in the next minute’ face on that photograph. Why do you ask?”

She turned the picture in his hand to reveal its back. In a neat handwriting there stood a line:

 _Find him. Save him._  
.  
.  
.  
tbc   



	5. The Dreams

Chapter five - **The Dreams**  
.  
Thousand thanks to rranne who does not only make this possible but also manages to flatter my vanity by laughing at the right places.  
.  
.  
.  
John stayed on his berth for the rest of the day, too weak to get up. More people came to have a look at him; the tall black one from earlier accompanied by a shorter blonde boy with bright eyes and a sensitive mouth, but John was too exhausted to keep their names in mind. He balanced on the verge of sleep most of the time, drifting off occasionally into uneasy slumber filled with _black coffee mortuary ringing phones you’ve just killed a man_ dreams that had no shape. They weren’t proper dreams in the first place; nothing of a storyline and no images that he would be able to revoke when he resurfaced again. Merely wispy cobwebs of dreams, torn and scattered; a recurring deep voice carrying on talking nonsense, sometimes a solitary detail; and a good deal of faces he never saw before but none of them resembling the face under the fancy deerstalker hat.

His actual medical knowledge extended only to the fourth semester of medicine which was quite disappointing; now he would never know if he had made it past the dreaded pathologic physiology exam. _Not like my degree would be useful these days anyway_ , he told himself, suspecting that a physician of twenty-third century would have to memorize more than one textbook on anatomy. _Maybe they specialize._

Notwithstanding his half-educated state, he understood that his retrograde amnesia could probably be caused by the hypoxic shock he went through when the life-support functions of his chamber collapsed. He was _this-close_ to permanent brain damage by oxygen deprivation, and could call himself lucky for not being reduced to vegetative state.

When he was awake, he tried to think about the man in that photograph, tried to imagine how his face would look when calm, or agitated, or laughing. He scrambled through his scant memories until his head ached but there was nothing – no name, no date; nothing that would indicate how he could find, let alone save, the man in this time and reality. His rescuers assured him that there was no chamber like his ever found on Earth, as far as the records went. The man was probably sniffing flowers from beneath for the better part of last three hundred years.

Next day he woke up, not remembering when he finally fell asleep, and feeling suddenly so hungry that he could eat a horse.

“Ready for a proper breakfast? They say that fresh air helps digestion,” the angel from yesterday smiled at him again. It took him five full seconds to unglue his eyes from that smile and process what she actually said. _Fresh air?_ His brain finally caught up enough to notice that he no longer was in a cave; he was surrounded by the faintly translucent canvas walls of a field tent that trembled slightly in a morning breeze, letting in cheering sounds of birds chirping and some stream gurgling in a stony bed nearby.

“We moved you last night; we needed the cave empty for the second stage of our project. I’ll tell you more about it once you’ve eaten something. Mad science is bad on empty stomach,” she laughed and went out, leaving a tray of fruit and some baked goods on his berth.

After his feast on glucose and carbohydrates, he tried to get up. It was not so bad. _Whoever designed that blasted chamber must have had thought of preventing the muscular atrophy_. He stepped out of the tent and felt the sun tickling on his face. It has suddenly occurred to him that after so many years inside a cave he should be white as a worm but when he looked at his hands he found tan lines around his wrists; still visible and distinct.

Their camp consisted of several tents and some heavy looking machine John assumed was capable of flying, since it had no wheels; all of which was half-circled by limestone hills, their slopes carved by countless streams. Not far away, a cave entrance opened in the hillside; formerly an outlet of a subterranean river whose stream decided to change its course.

“Morning, Watson! Good to see you up. Careful though; no wobbly legs?” The blonde head of the vivid young man from yesterday peeped out from another tent, followed by the rest of his body, lean and nimble and vibrating with energy as he stretched his back in the sun, cracking the knuckles of his interlaced fingers.

“Morning...Um.” John tried to remember his name and failed.

“Del March. Kindergarten physicist at your service. Don’t ask _me_ what we are doing in the middle of this breathtaking mountain scenery because it’s Vance’s fault we’re not somewhere more appropriate– Vance! Get up!” he yelled abruptly in the middle of his rather incomprehensible speech, causing John to jump and the next tent wall to shake with something more than wind. Another man emerged from it, rubbing his eyes vigorously.

“This is Vance Madison,” March waved towards him, obviously excited by their new acquaintance. “My colleague, mentor, proof-reader, best friend, and nanny. Depending on what stage of the calculations we are in.”

The man called Vance smirked at John, seeing no need to add words to this introduction, and shook his hand in a firm, warm grip. “Please, don’t get mad at Del. These terrain explorations are eating him up and I’m afraid he sees you as a gift from Heaven to distract him.”

“It’s okay. I’m used to dealing with bored geniuses with all the consequences,” John laughed and then froze; _why on Earth did I just say that?_

Neither scientist noticed his discomfort; as they were already deep in discussion, addressing him, but more arguing with each other.

“We should report you to the nearest Federation check-point,” Madison said.

“No!” March groaned. “They would drive us out and seal this entire area, just when we finally found a cave big enough for–”

“Have some sense, Del. Mr. Watson here must be anxious to know–”

“He’s certainly not anxious to fall prey to the archaeologists and be poked and probed at, like a precious relic.” John found himself seconding that with a nod.

“We don’t even know enough about the technology. The Fleet has access to records–”

“I won’t have _military_ near our project,” March snarled. “I won’t be a pawn in the hands of Starfleet! You know, Vance, what happens once we let them–”

“Gentlemen,” John interposed, “as far as _I_ am concerned, I’d go with the ‘finders keepers’ rule. At least for as long as you need to finish this project here, whatever it is. Any objections?”

March beamed at him. “Now, Watson, you’re a man after my taste.” Madison only shook his head, unconvinced, but knowing better than to provoke the temper of his younger friend.

“That’s settled, then,” John said, winking at Madison. “Now, I _am_ anxious to hear more about this project you keep talking about.”

They told him– March in carelessly expert words, Madison more comprehensibly– about their field of physics; about the two sub-atomic particles they discovered and named them ‘snarks’ and ‘boojums’ out of a Lewis Carroll poem.  “The usual scientific nomenclature is so boring!” March continued on about how their team designed a device that would emanate a wave capable of retransforming any matter into something new; something they could dictate. In the midst of their ramblings, when John started to lose even the gist of it, the Deltan angel of a mathematician finally came to his rescue, taking him to lunch.

She told him her name was Zinaina Chitirih-Ra-Payjh. She laughed in dulcet tones when he couldn’t get past the first three syllables of her family name, telling him that it would be alright to call her just Zinaida and asking him for his given name in return. It only took him  hearing his name leaving those perfect lips to develop a crush he hadn’t experienced since he was fifteen– but his heart sagged considerably when he was introduced to her Deltan partner, Jedda Adzhinn-Dall; equally tall and beautiful, but with dark hair that fell way past his shoulder-blades.

Later that day, he watched them walking away to their tent; moving perfectly in sync, heads inclined towards each other, and waves of their combined pheromones rolling off them making everyone near them losing their breath for a while, when he heard a throat being cleared rather forcibly behind his back.

He spun around to find the young March watching the retreating couple with longing eyes; then he smiled at John and said wryly: “Welcome aboard.”

John smiled back, mildly embarrassed for being caught ogling. “How do you stand it, all the time? How do _they_ stand it? I mean, they must know that we are...well.” He trailed off uncertainly.

“That we are drooling over them night and day?” March laughed. “Oh, they _do_ know. I think they laugh at us. Not cruelly; just because humans must seem so silly and immature to them.”

“I’d bet that humans aren’t anywhere near the top on the ‘Galaxy’s finest’ list, are they?” John winced.

“Oh, don’t be an idiot,” March snorted, completely oblivious to the way John gaped at his words– _there was some pink–coloured memory brushing the edges his conscious mind, almost..._ and then it was gone again. _Damn it._

“It’s true that there are civilizations much older and finer than ours; that we can look like savages to some– why, wait ‘til you meet a Vulcan. No-one can give better down-the-nose looks than those pointy-eared bastards. But we are the founders of the Federation after all; and being human is nothing you should be ashamed of, John.”

John certainly wasn’t ashamed of being human enough to ask March if there wasn’t any chance for a drink. March grinned, immediately hooked in: “Come on, man. I got some Romulan ale; don’t tell Vance. I’ll show you _savage._ ”

John felt that he was beginning to like this genius.

.  
.  
.  
tbc   



	6. The Trap

Chapter six - **The Trap**

Rather a lengthy chapter; but finally we get to meet our fascinating adversary again. Thanks to rranne for warp speed betaing:)  
.  
.  
.  
John woke in the next morning to the painful realisation that while his memory might be twenty-one years old, his body has aged happily for twice as long a time; and if he liked March last night, he was going to hate him this morning. He also suspected that he wasn’t going to like the Romulans, whoever they were; he wasn’t sure if any race capable of producing such a drink still had the right to call themselves civilized.

“That stuff should be illegal,” he grunted instead of _Good morning_ when he saw the cause of his trouble.

“It is,” March grinned wickedly. “I’ve built up a resistance by now, but I still remember what a hell of a hangover feels like.”

It was more than the painful sobering up that cast a mood of gloom over John that morning. He began to feel the full weight of his situation and his prospect weren’t helping to cheer him up at all. _I’m useless,_ he thought. _Useless, worn out, and old._

“Hey man, what’s the matter?” March asked, surprisingly aware of something happening  outside his own head. John would never call the youth sympathetic, but he certainly was extremely observant.

“I’m screwed,” John answered in full honesty. “I’ve lost more than half of my life; probably everything that ever mattered. I’m in a world that suddenly shrunk to a mere one planet out of many, in a time that would send me back to school just to catch up with recent history. There’s a man I’m supposed to find without even knowing if he’s still alive; I keep having flashbacks that make no sense, and to crown it all, last night I dreamed about _the_ _Chinese circus_ of all things; so I think I should just go and lock myself back in that thing you’ve pulled me out from.”

“Hmmm...I’d usually prescribe another drink for this sort of mindset,” March scratched his head, “but then, I’m not a doctor,” he added hastily when he saw the shade of green John’s face turned into at the thought, “so I think I’ll show you something instead. Something that’ll make you feel young as when the world was new.”

He grabbed John by the arm and all but dragged him towards the cave entrance, ignoring his faint protests as he went on: “The Himalayas are not very cavernous; so when our expedition hit upon this karst formation we could hardly believe our luck.”

They were barely a few yards deep in the rocky passage when March pushed John unceremoniously into a large cage made of metal bars on a wooden platform; slammed the door behind them and pulled a lever somewhere; John realized it was the simplest model of a lift when he nearly lost his footing with the unexpected speed of their descend. The steel cable sliding through the mechanism squealed and March’s shouting, echoing from the walls of the shaft, wasn’t helping to ease John’s headache in the slightest.

“This was a multi-level subterranean river system once. When the groundwater conditions changed at the end of the last Ice Age, the stream went elsewhere and this entire cave system dried, leaving all the system barren– not even a bat ever dwelt here; that was one of the our conditions, that it be lifeless. Then, probably after an earthquake, the ceilings of all levels caved in and created a _dome_.” March exhaled the last word reverently. When the platform hit the bottom, he stepped out and sneaked through a narrow horizontal tunnel, bidding John to follow.

 _The air was strange_ , John thought when breathing in. He expected higher level of humidity and perhaps some musty smell; but the air coming through the tunnel was fresh and fragrant...

“We’ve accomplished the stage two of our project here the night before last,” March said proudly and stepped aside to let John pass by. “The last oscillations of the Genesis wave died out after twenty-four hours; but the main of what you see was created within minutes.”

John stood at the end of the tunnel, feet rooted in the rock ground, and stared.

The dome– a cave of giant proportions– spread out before him; so vast that the opposite end of it seemed to be shrouded in mist. Thin, hazy fog hovered high above him, rolling slowly in some imperceptible air current; small floating objects illuminated the scenery with a dispersed light, and everything– as far as he could see– was covered with vegetation.

Trees that looked centuries old were spreading their branches over the clearings amongst the bushes. Meadows with waist-high grass stretched far and wide, spotted with flowers. Dark green of pines was intermixed with the white blossoms of cherries; runners of grapevine climbed up around the cedar trees. Small stream run its silvery water over pebbles– in nature it would take years to make the stones round; John knew it. This was a Garden of Eden; somehow transplanted from the beginnings of time into the insides of a mountain.

John didn’t know when his legs gave way under him but when he next came around from this daydream, he found March sitting next to him.

“This is just a test, John. Our device is meant to work on the planetary scale. Imagine how we can take a barren world, a dead planet, and turn it into a Paradise.”

“What if the world wasn’t barren? What if there was life on it already?” John heard himself saying. March nodded gravely.

“That’s exactly why we want to stay away from any military involvement. Soldiers can only see everything as a weapon; and it’s true that Genesis could be perverted into a formidable one.”

John got up and took few tentative steps to the end of a tunnel – its opening was still good twenty meters above the ground; wondering if there was a possibility to have one of the flowers, to crush its petals in his palm to make sure that it’s real. He looked down and...

“Hey, John! John! Calm down, it’s okay!” March was holding him by the shoulders, shaking perhaps too vehemently, as John was still backing off the edge, overtaken by a panic attack. “What was it? Was it another of those flashbacks you told me about?”

“Yes,” John managed to get out over the tightness in his throat. He looked at March with horror in wide eyes, afraid even to blink should he again see the picture of... _rooftop of a building, sharp outlined against the grey sky, drizzle mixing with blood on the pavement, the dark-coated figure crumpled down, eyes empty, no pulse..._ John wound his arms around himself and fixed his gaze into the lush green, waiting for his breathing to get back to normal.

“You know, Del, about this man I should find, the one in the photograph, I still don’t know who he was, but I think he’s dead.” John spoke quietly.

“The photograph _could_ have been a keepsake,” March rationalized, “but what about the message? Whoever gave it to you must have thought him alive.”

“I saw him die,” John shuddered at the memory. “I checked his pulse. Whoever he was, he’s dead and I have absolutely no purpose here.”

“But look at _this!_ ” March exploded. “It’s true that you have no memory, no legacy, no past. Sod the past! Forget the _could-have-been’s_! Bury your dead, John, and think about future! We can create new worlds; surely you can create a new life for yourself!”

“As an archaeological relic, yeah,” John answered grimly.

“Finders keepers, remember? Come with us, John. Tomorrow we pack and move on to stage three.” March talked too excitedly to be taken seriously, but John smiled nonetheless. He reminded him of someone... _if only I knew of whom._

“It’s true that you aren’t technically a doctor; but none of us is a physician and we could use one. Come on. Don’t brood. The universe is far too interesting place for that.”

*

“There’s really nothing to it. You’re going to feel like– I don’t know; like someone’s lifting you and placing you again,” Madison assured him.

“There are even some who _enjoy_ it,” March winked at him through the visor of his helmet before he disappeared in the column of circling sparks. John swallowed. _I have dog-tags. I’ve been a soldier. They’re going to scatter me to atoms in an energy beam and then they’ll assemble me again on the bloody planet like a bloody jigsaw puzzle and they’re obviously doing it all the time, so I can do this too._ He stepped onto the platform together with Zinaida; glad for his spacesuit to hide any nervous twitching he might be suffering, and nodded as she said: “Energize.”

When the sparkles ceased to float before his eyes, he fell to his knees ungraciously and retched – right inside his helmet, to his utter dismay. The rest of the landing party immediately gathered around him.

“Are you going to repeat this when we beam up? I should tell the staff to have a bucket ready,” March couldn’t give it a miss, barely stifling his laughter.

John raised a hand to wipe his mouth and cursed when he realized the impossibility of it. “You forgot to mention the ‘someone’s going to turn you arse about face’ bit,” he addressed Madison with a weak glare; he couldn’t pull out anything stronger.

“There’s no need for you to be mean about it, _twins_ ,” Zinaida rebuked them promptly.

“Transport intolerance is rare, but it happens; and I’d like to see _you_ laughing if it happened to you.” She turned to John who managed to get back to standing; all his atoms were obviously in their right places because the dizziness was fading quickly. Pity that the smell was doing quite the opposite.

“I’m afraid this would exclude you from landing parties in times to come; we cannot spare a shuttle every time we need to have a closer look.”

John didn’t feel much of an urge to argue it. He didn’t like the planet anyway.

The second month of their space mission neared its end and they were no closer their goal than when they started. The Federation scientific committee appointed a small ship, the USS Reliant, to the purpose of finding a completely lifeless planet within the habitable zone of a G-type star. John often agreed with Clark Terrell, Reliant’s Captain, that he should paint the ship black to make it look more like a London cab. _They still have cabs in London after nearly three hundred years and I get to hail a spaceship,_ John thought in exasperated amusement.

The task of finding a planet that would meet the expectations for stage three of the Genesis project proved to be tedious to the extreme. Planets, hitherto reported of as dead, turned up surprisingly alive– even when that meant usually some bacteria colony merely scraping along on these God-forsaken places; the scientific team steadfastly refused to use such planets, claiming – quite justly – that life on Earth has once been a bacteria colony too and that disturbing the natural course of evolution would be against the Prime Directive.  
During his voluntary hermitage aboard of USS Reliant John barely left the med bay, determined to make good on his role as the physician of the group. He learned how to operate most of the examination equipment and came to a surprising, but pleasing, realisation that while most of his conscious knowledge of medicine was locked somewhere in his unattainable memory, his brain seemed to have access to those parts instinctually– he often found himself _knowing_ certain facts without actually remembering learning them.

“So, how about this one?” he asked casually while assisting the official ship’s doctor with the routine health check on the Captain.

“Ceti Alpha Five? I’d say lost cause. An automatic mapping probe flew through this system some fifty years ago, finding absolutely nothing of importance. Sounds promising, except that there’s been an energy flux in the scanner readings I can’t successfully blame on the instrumentation,” the Captain complained.

John tried to cheer him up. “Maybe it’s something you can transplant, um?”

“You _know_ what they’ll say,” Terrell snorted. “I’m going down with Madison this time; if he’s going to dismiss it as usual, he’s getting to do the dirty work himself.”

*

The sandstorm hit them as soon as they materialized, nearly knocking them down.

“Are you sure these are the right coordinates?” Terrell shouted over the howling of the wind. Madison shielded the screen of the tricoder with his free hand, trying to decipher its readings. Staggering slightly on the unstable surface of sand dunes, they set out in the vague direction the scanner gave them; some life form, responsible for the energy flux, should be near.

 _How could anything survive here_ , Terrell thought when he nearly hit a rock with his head before he could make it out in the near zero visibility in the storm. Then he halted himself: the overall shape of the rock was too geometric and upon closer look on its weathered surface it was clear that this supposed rock was made of metal. His eyes searched for Madison who was already standing in front of something which looked much like a door.

They entered what appeared to be a wrecked cargo ship. One quick check with the tricoder and they could remove their helmets; the fact that the air in here was still breathable should have alarmed them but they were both overwhelmed with curiosity. Madison sniffed; the air smelled of sweat and urine and the stale odour of cooking. _Someone lived here_...

Terrell spun around when he thought he just heard a child, giggling somewhere behind him, but he couldn’t see anyone. _If this was a shipwreck, where were the survivors?_ He turned back to Madison, in time to see him falling to the ground, unconscious; strange figures loomed over him, clad in ragged cloaks, their faces obscured by cloths.

He made an instinctive move for Madison and reached for his communicator when he suddenly felt the strong grip of arms from behind, immobilizing him; regardless how fiercely he wrestled to get free, he was gradually forced to his knees; another pair of hands grabbed his head and turned it towards the corridor leading inside the ship. Everyone stilled in anticipation; even Terrell froze against his will, as a tall man emerged from the door, revealing a pair of cold assessing eyes in a pale face as he removed his sand cloth.

“Captain, Captain, Captain...” he mocked Terrell and his attempts to free himself with a pitiful smile that didn’t reach his eyes, “save your strength. You will need it.”   

.  
.  
.  
tbc  



	7. The Dread

Chapter seven - **The Dread**

Thanks to **rranne** for not only betaing but also tampering down Khan's psychopathy a bit:)

.  
.  
.  
  
Cold sweat pearled on the base of Clark Terrell’s neck and run down his spine beneath the inner lining of his spacesuit; he couldn’t tear his eyes from the unrelenting stare of the stranger– he was captured like a bird under the gaze of a viper; the power of those clear eyes, alone, capable of pinning him down: _unable to move, unable to think_. Terrell barely registered the hands divesting him of his phaser and communicator; he felt like his skull was about to crack open, revealing its insides and all his secret thoughts. _My ship_ , he thought. _Jesus Christ, my ship._

The leader of their captors took off his cloak, exposing his clothes that looked as if sewn together of anything that could possibly serve as protection– pieces of upholstery and floor-carpeting; all weather-worn and ragged. His long hair was swept back from his face into a loose braid, without a trace of silver in the smooth blackness, contrasting with the bluish paleness of his skin; and it was hard to tell the man’s age– it could be anything between thirty and fifty. He seemed to command the men around him without having to speak aloud; they moved and acted in perfect accord, with threatening efficiency.

Finally, the spell broke. Terrell drew in a steadying breath and began: “Sir, I demand–”

“ _You,_ ” the leader practically spat the word, “are in position to demand _nothing_ , Captain.” He folded his hands, regarding Terrell contemptuously, and smirked an ironic half-smile: “I, on the other hand, am in position to _grant_ nothing.”

“However pleasant this might be, I’m still surprised to find you here in the first place,” he continued, the tone of his voice in such contrast to the conversational lightness of his words that it send shivers down Terrell’s spine.

“Did the Starfleet change their minds about the ostracism of my people? I was given to understand that our exile here was permanent.”

 _Exile?_ Terrell frowned momentarily before he reminded himself that it would be better not to give anything away; but the man in front of him was a quick reader of people’s expressions.

His eyes narrowed as he spoke: “You have no idea who I am.”

“I’m shocked,” he exclaimed, in a mock amusement. “Did the name of Khan Noonien Singh really leave such fleeting impression on the mighty Federation? Although I should have expected some extent of an information embargo on the Kronos incident, it still pains me to see that the shameful conduct of Admiral Marcus is not a part of the school syllabus.”

One name in this tirade caught Terrell’s attention. “I was still at the Academy when Admiral Marcus was reported dead,” he replied apologetically, trying not to let the sarcastic complaints of this man grow into something worse.

The man who called himself Khan stilled, shooting him a quick, assessing glance; his brows already drawing together. “Inexperienced. Ordinary. Untrustworthy of a greater action or scheme...tell me, Captain: why are you here?”

“What do you mean?” Terrell swallowed, buying himself some time.

Khan went on in a flat voice as if explaining the obvious: “You didn’t know you’d find anyone here. That’s why you investigated the discovery of our ship without taking any precautions towards your safety.”

“Well, I...I certainly didn’t expect exiles–” Terrell cleared his throat, “–or prisoners. This planet is not suitable for such–”

Khan’s outburst was unexpected, his eyes suddenly alight with rage: “For such– what? Life spent in inevitable dying out, one after another? Slow execution of one of the most cruel death sentences? The notorious James T. Kirk must have patted himself on the back for such an idea– leaving us to settle in a garden of a planet only to watch it destroyed mere months after! And even if he hadn’t known beforehand about the comet that was going to collide with our world, exploding in the atmosphere, destroying nearly all life in tidal waves and wildfires, and clouding off the sunshine for years to come, even if he hadn’t known about the impending disaster that had claimed the lives of two thirds of my people; he _should have_ found out, if only he ever bothered to check on us! But in his self-righteous pride he didn’t, not even once in fifteen years!”

The walls of the wrecked ship seemed to shake with the echo of this accusation; Terrell’s mouth went dry. “Admiral Kirk surely didn’t mean–”

“Admiral? Admiral!” Khan shouted; and with that his rage suddenly vanished like a tornado that breaks to nothing once spent out. His voice was again controlled and quiet; for some reason he seemed more of a threat like that– with his fury cold and calculated.

I have a _very_ foul experience with what the Admirals of the Starfleet deem justifiable in their own judgment. You, Captain, surely understand that I have to protect my people,” Khan whispered as if lost in thoughts; then he snapped back to the present, his eyes clear and commanding.

“Kirk didn’t send you to check on us or to end us in the midst of our misery; and yet you are here, a representative of a military organization _suddenly_ expressing interest in a seemingly dead planet. My question holds. Why have you come here? Why have you sought a dead world?”

 _Genesis. This insane man mustn’t know about it...even over my dead body_. Terrell attempted to look innocent while he desperately thought about a credible excuse, but it was already too late. Khan knew there was a secret; his smile widened and his voice dropped confidently.

“Oh, Captain...don’t stress yourself. You _will_ tell me. You will _love_ to tell me.”

Khan made few steps across the room to a large glass box almost full of sand, slow and deliberate in his movements, as if to make his captive more terrified by not knowing what was going to happen, and picked up a pair of tweezers.

“Did you know,” he asked conversationally, “that of all creatures, the arthropods are the most fit to survive any catastrophe, regardless of the scale? In my time; we used to joke that black beetles can survive even a nuclear explosion.”

The tweezers prodded at the sand, eliciting a scraping sound from inside. Grains of sand moved as if on their own volition; Terrell watched it with horror, unable to look away.

“There were small deserts in this world; before it all turned into one without end. One very interesting species of arachnids lived in the desert sand– evolution taught him how to parasitise on small homoeothermic animals, usually sand mice.”

His prey caught; Khan lifted the tweezers in the level of his eyes, admiring the spider with a self-satisfied smile. “After the weather conditions on this planet worsened so that it could no more sustain the life of the spider’s hosts; this fascinating species was also on the verge of extinction. But they proved to be unexpectedly apt at adaptation. Two men of my crew were dead by the time we noticed that the spiders were taking the advantage of hosts larger than mice.”

Khan turned towards Terrell, his voice cold and detached as if giving a scientific lecture.

“You see, the spider latches on the nape of one’s neck, right under the skull, and injects its ovipositor between it and the first cervical vertebra directly into the brain stem, where it plants its eggs.”

Terrell began to shake but the hands held him tight.

“Despite the fact that the arachnids are usually predators, this species has developed a cohabitation behaviour together with a collective consciousness. Like the bees. I find bees fascinating, don’t you, Captain?”

Terrell’s head was forced down, the back of his neck exposed.

“Collective consciousness requires communication; it is achieved via pheromones. Soon you will experience these pheromones on your own system, Captain; they affect the brain reward centres. From the moment of the injection, you will instinctively seek reward; you shall be as docile as a bee. My face; my voice will imprint upon you; there will be nothing you would like to hide from me, nothing you wouldn’t do for me.”

When he felt the first touch of the stubbly legs on his skin, Terrell screamed.

“There is only one drawback to this wonderful symbiosis,” Khan shook his head pityingly, his fingers smoothing the damp hair away from Terrell’s nape in a gesture that was _almost_ gentle.

“Once the young spiders hatch from their eggs, you’ll die.”  
.  
.  
.  
.tbc  



	8. The Hide

Chapter 8 - **The Hide**

Wherein a reunion almost happens. Many thanks to [](http://rranne.livejournal.com/profile)[**rranne**](http://rranne.livejournal.com/)  or putting up with me and let's also not forget [](http://quoshara.livejournal.com/profile)[**quoshara**](http://quoshara.livejournal.com/) and her most helpful Trek geekiness:)

.  
.  
  
John lies sprawled inside one of the horizontal Jefferies tubes not far from the bridge, face pressed in the rounded metallic surface, the cold touch grounding him; not moving, barely daring to breathe, definitely not venturing to think. _Stop thinking, John, it’s too loud._

The sudden onslaught of his memories doesn’t require any intellectual efforts anyway; he just lets it flow.

He’s got everything back. He remembers Afghanistan battlefields and those of London; he remembers the gun in his drawer and his therapy sessions and the brazen numbers 221B on an unassuming house in an ordinary street. He cherishes a single unbroken line of memories starting with handing over his mobile phone and ending with the syringe being pressed in his arm inside a black car. And most of all, he remembers Sherlock Holmes.

_I know you’re for real._

_A hundred percent?_

_Well, nobody could fake being such an annoying dick all the time._

He’s remembered him the moment he heard him again. That voice, with undertones that make it carry into every corner of the room; deep into the tubes where John was hiding. He was crawling through the service tubes, desperate to find out what’s going on, when the distant sound of that voice stopped him dead.

Now, when he thinks about it, when he allows himself just the tiniest thoughts out of fear that he might be really caught thinking aloud; he finds that he doesn’t really remember entering the crawl-ways in the first place. One moment he was walking down a corridor by the transporter room when he heard the nauseating buzz of the beaming ray–

– _the landing party’s back, might go and ask Terrell how it went_ , he thought–

–when he heard the staff’s surprised shout, the unmistakable sounds of wrestling, _too brief_ , and a thud, _body hitting the ground_ , and Jedda’s agitated voice calling something incomprehensible–

–and then he was pressing his body against the wall, carefully looking out behind a corner and into the open transporter room; where he saw a stranger in a sand-covered cloak, standing over the unconscious body of the transporter operator, pointing a phaser at Jedda Adzhinn-Dall; and he saw Captain Terrell behind the console, activating the beam again; and... _where’s Madison_...flashed through John’s mind. His question was abruptly answered as Vance Madison materialized on the platform together with a tall, imperious man and stepped down after him with his head bowed deferentially– _no, wait, something’s wrong here, Terrell’s head is bowed too and the position is not reverence; their shoulders are tensed and tendons strung and eyes glassy as if with pain,_ and then Jedda was speaking again and several things happened at once.

The tall, black-haired man was about to walk out of the transporter room when Jedda moved; his Deltan strength and reflexes in a blur as he tackled his guard down and leapt to grab the intruder round the neck;  he was swifter than humans and his athletic body was skilled in combat and for the briefest moment he managed to take them all by surprise–

Then Vance Madison lifted his phaser and Jedda vanished in a flash of dazzling red light.

The intruder did only as much as half-turn; an amused smile fleeting over his calm face before he continued; but it gave John the time he needed to back off and squeeze himself into the nearest service tube opening, adrenalin singing high in his veins and head throbbing with _hide from plain sight_ , _must warn the others_ , _what the fuck am I doing?_  

Then he heard the faint echo of Zinaida’s desperate cry coming to him through the tubes and remembered what he heard about the Deltan bond. _Well. They have been warned._

John heard more transporter beams as he crawled away as stealthily as he could, contemplating his next moves so cold-bloodily that it frightened him– he felt as if watching his body from above; following the instincts he didn’t know he had, letting them take over the control over his actions. He realized that his current position gave him the advantage of seeing without being seen; from the numbers of transports he heard he judged that he had no chance in confronting the intruders in the open. USS Reliant was a small ship, manned only with the minimal crew; nobody thought that their mission would require anything more. The crew was already outnumbered and John couldn’t forget the subjugated look in Madison’s eyes, telling him that there was more against their odds than a simple headcount.

Faint sounds of distress and feeble fighting flowed ethrough the tubes from the direction of the bridge; John could imagine the intruders taking over the control of the ship. He decided that on taking a careful look. The cacophony of voices on the bridge hushed after a while, leaving a single commanding voice to rise above the others with clarity that froze John on the spot.

It was then when he remembered; and he was at once immensely grateful for his Army instincts being so eager to kick in after more than two hundred years of dormancy. Sherlock was more than a match for him even before his change, with his height advantage, lightning reflexes, and practice of martial arts. John buried his face in his hands, feeling the chilly draught in the tubes biting at his sweat-damp skin, and tried to connect in his mind the face of a consulting detective he used to know with the face of the man whom he just saw; a man who merely smirked when Madison killed his friend for him without even being ordered.

 _Stay low, Watson_ , he reminded himself. _No use making plans before you know all the variables._

*

Del March stares at Khan with youthful defiance, one arm thrown protectively over Zinaida’s shoulders. The woman is still half-paralysed with the shock caused by the loss of her bond-mate; March’s shirt is damp with her tears and it makes him furious and light-headed at once.

“Don’t put up a fight, Del.” Madison’s voice is weary and there is an undertone of pain. He holds his head low as if to avoid the pressure to the back of his skull.

“You’re wasting your time with me. I won’t tell you anything.”

Khan is examining the Genesis device, a metallic column of approximately a man’s height and width, and ostentatively pretends not to notice the way March is all but twitching with the urge to jump and throttle him with his bare hands. There is, in fact, no danger of that; Madison still has the phaser.

“What do you think you’re doing?” March cannot hold himself. “This is a scientific–”

“If you would just shut up,” Khan interrupts him dismissively, “I do not require you _talking_.”

He finishes his inspection and turns to the scientists with a smile that looks almost generous.

“If I was in need of using your device, I’m sure that Doctor Madison here would be more than happy to help me. But you see, Doctor March; I don’t want to steal your project. I will simply borrow it for a while.”

“What for?” March barks out, even when he believes not a word of what was said.

“What good would a newly created world bring to me, Doctor March?” Khan answers him with another question; one that’s definitely rhetorical. “I have already ruled in Hell; I don’t want to create a Paradise to settle in only to find myself surrounded by Starfleet cruisers with their weaponry aimed at me. No; I don’t want a new planet. I want my _vengeance_.”

March’s eyes widen in horror. _If he doesn’t want to create, he only wants to destroy; did Vance tell him what would Genesis do to a living planet?...of course he did._

“I want my vengeance,” Khan repeats. “I want Admiral James T. Kirk. And to make him come to me, I shall use this wonderful device as a bait. So you see, my friend; as long as you behave reasonably, nothing will happen to you.”

*

“Diplomatic negotiations are going to be the death of me.”

McCoy filled his own glass and clinked it against Kirk’s, taking a careful sip. Out of a habit, he offered the bottle to Spock, who settled for a pointedly quirked eyebrow instead of giving a lecture about Vulcans and alcohol. Kirk studied the clear liquid against the light for a moment before sending it down in one go and offering his glass for another refill.

“Not when you die of alcohol poisoning first,” McCoy observed. “No need to be so gloomy about it. You did well.”

“I did exactly _nothing_ ,” Kirk pointed out the fact that the entire three days of heavy diplomatic dialogues didn’t lead to the slightest change in the status quo. The Neutral Zone borders wouldn’t move an inch anytime soon.

“May I correct you, sir,” Spock cut in, “ _nothing_ was the exact expected outcome of these negotiations.”

“Why did we _do_ them at all, then?”

“We have established diplomatic relations. We keep them.” Spock shrugged.

“We don’t stare at each other from the opposite sides of the border with our fingers on the trigger,” McCoy grinned. “That’s a progress.”

“I’d be happier if they could progress without getting me involved,” Kirk grumbled. “Take Admiral Paris for example – he’s a slippery bastard, he would _enjoy_ it.”

“The Klingons wouldn’t enjoy _him_ ,” McCoy snorted. “They wanted you. You’ve earned quite a reputation dealing with them; they respect you.”

“You know, Bones,” Kirk swivelled the liquid in his glass, enjoying the play of light on its surface, “I miss those days I could _deal_ with the Klingons from the Captain’s seat. What am I dealing with now, is paperwork.”

“If I may be so bold,” Spock assumed his best ‘let’s hear the logic’ expression, “it was a mistake for you to accept promotion. Commanding a star ship is your first, best destiny; anything else is a waste of material.”

“I would not presume to debate you,” Kirk nodded grimly.

“That is wise. Were I to invoke logic–”

“For God’s sake, Spock!” McCoy rolled his eyes. “He agreed with you, so keep your last word for yourself just once!”

Whatever Spock’s further intentions in the dialogue might have been, he never got to express them aloud; as Uhura’s voice, at once sweet and professionally modulated, was heard from intercom speaker: _Bridge to Captain._

Kirk lifted his head instinctively and came within an ace of answering the call when he remembered that he no longer was in command of the Enterprise.

“Spock here. What is it?”

_We’ve received a distress call from USS Reliant. They report a malfunction of life support systems and they’re asking any ship near them to recover their crew._

“Reliant is Terrell’s ship, isn’t it?” Kirk remembered. “Makes me wonder who he annoyed to end up on that boneshaker. Twenty years old Miranda class, my Goodness.”

“Why don’t they high-tail it for the nearest base?” McCoy asked. “Even in this God-forsaken area; they could reach a haven long before they’d run out of oxygen.”

The three men were now pacing swiftly towards the turbolift; drinks forgotten on the table in Kirk’s private cabin.

 _Captain Terrell claims that the scientific equipment carried on board forbids the use of warp._ Uhura’s voice hesitated minutely before continuing: _He also says that everything about this equipment is classified and that he– I’m quoting now, sir– is not hazarding his ass so close to the Neutral Zone, sir._

“That’s Terrell,” Kirk laughed as they entered the bridge. “So, Captain Spock; can we afford a little detour on our journey?”

“If you are amenable, sir,” Spock tilted his head, already knowing where this was going.

“I certainly am,” Kirk grinned. “Paperwork can wait.”

*

On the bridge of USS Reliant, Khan nodded approvingly. “Well done, Captain. You have pleased me.”

Terrell stepped away from the communication post, hands clasped together so tightly that they shook, resisting the urge to scratch on the back of his neck where his skin was red and swollen.

“What happens now?” Joachim asked from behind the helm where he already made himself familiar with most of the ship’s maneuvering abilities; his intelligence supplementing the lacks of experience.

Khan rested his back in the Captain’s seat, steepling his fingers under his chin.

“The Enterprise, the flagship of our dear friend Kirk, will come to our rescue. They will be running with shields down; we are one big, happy fleet after all. Do I really have to explain the rest?”  
.  
.  
.  
.tbc  



	9. The Flight

Chapter 9 - **The Flight**

Sent over to rranne at 23:00, got it back at 5:55, so if I am writing quickly, it is solely because of her. She's a marvel.  
.  
.  
.  
  
 _They will be running with their shields down._

John heard that in his hiding spot and an idea popped up inside his head. As much as he longed to confront Sherlock; he knew it would be pure madness to do it now. He remembered what Mycroft told him and more: what the elder Holmes didn’t tell him– at least, not with words. But the look in his eyes was clear that day. The man wasn’t only worried about Sherlock– he was afraid of him.

And John knew that if Mycroft Holmes was afraid of something, that something would scare an ordinary man shitless.

It wasn’t the first time John heard the name James T. Kirk. Clark Terrell seemed to have the utmost respect for the man; he obviously enjoyed a high reputation. John only hoped that he would live up to it.

 

John began to crawl back to the transporter room, now left unguarded. The crew of the Reliant – marooned on Ceti Alpha V; Khan’s people took their place, keeping only the Genesis team on board as prisoners. Nobody seemed to miss John; he wasn’t listed among the starship’s crew nor did he officially belong to Genesis. This virtual non-existence was now playing in his favour.

After his first disastrous experience with the transporter beam, he tried to approach the problem rationally – thinking that if he would fully understand the process, his body wouldn’t be reacting so violently. He spent several days behind the transporter console, learning how to operate it. Of course, it didn’t work for easing the nausea in the slightest; but it was going to pay off now.

John knew that the ship-to-ship transport is possible only when both ships had their shields down. That gave him a narrow window of time for his plan; he couldn’t rush in too soon as he knew that the transporter could be operated remotely from Reliant’s bridge – he had to wait until the bridge would be distracted enough by the approaching Enterprise to not notice the transport indicator light. But he couldn’t wait for long; Reliant will be the first to raise shields, moments before the attack.

As to the rest of his plan; he was glad that he skipped breakfast today. _I should fetch a towel_ , he thought, _if I’m going to hitchhike through half of the Galaxy._

*

When Khan entered the cabin where the prisoners were held, Zinaida didn’t even lift her head. She continued to stare, eyes reddened with fresh tears, on the face of Del March who rested in her lap as if sleeping, traces of shock written in his too young features. Her fingers carded through his fair hair mechanically, over and over.

“Was that necessary?” Khan frowned, addressing the guard by the door. An almost innocently looking– were it not for the blood stains– knife, no more than a letter opener, lay on the floor by the guard’s feet.

“I’m sorry, sir. He went psychotic after the man Madison came down here shortly before the spiders hatched. I dealt with it by phaser.”

Khan only nodded to that; it was indeed an act of mercy to kill the spider’s host as soon as the younglings began to hatch. Additionally, nobody wanted the ship overrun with such dangerous creatures.

“I don’t know where he got that knife,” the guard licked his lips nervously. “When Madison died, the boy lost it. I tried to put him in his place but he wouldn’t let go.”

“We might have needed him,” Khan said, a hint of menace in his voice. Then he raked a swift glance over March’s body. “But I can see that the stab wound was accidental. It’s unfortunate that he bled out so quickly.” The guard relaxed visibly, seeing that the prisoners weren’t such a priority for his leader as to get him punished for their death.

“Now we need you,” Khan turned to Zinaida, who faced him calmly.

“My people found something in the cargo bay of this ship that immediately intrigued me. A hibernation chamber.”

“What about it?” Zinaida’s voice was weary. She couldn’t make herself even sound interested. All her friends were dead; nothing mattered anymore. There were faint shadows lurking on the edges of her vision; _waiting_.

“Quite an unusual piece of equipment, even for your extraordinary field of study. Tell me, Doctor, how did it come into your keeping?”

“How is it of any matter to you?” Something about his tone had warned her. _Hibernation chamber. John and his photograph..._ She looked at Khan sharply, really looked for the first time, and she recognised him.

_This is the man John is supposed to find. They knew each other before; that fact that he’s asking me about the chamber means that they haven’t met yet– John is not dead; he’s hiding somewhere._

“You don’t know about my origin, Doctor; I don’t blame you for that. I have spent centuries in a very similar chamber, and I can tell my design when I see it. Now you understand that it is of utmost importance to me to know, whom did you find in that chamber.”

_Khan mustn’t find him, mustn’t know about him– John doesn’t remember; he’s lost his memory; were he found now, he would be converted to the will of this man, without a chance to influence him._

Zinaida looked Khan in the eyes and knew instantly that this man could tell the truth from the lie as soon as it was spoken. _I have to be careful. Everything I say must be the truth._

“There was a man. We didn’t know who he was. No ID, no files.”

Khan’s eyes narrowed at her. “Surely he introduced himself when you awakened him.”

“He suffered with retrograde amnesia. Hypoxic shock by the pull-out.” _That’s truth enough._

“Not even to know his name?”

“We called him John. There’s a common use of the name John Doe for unknown persons.” _Both facts perfectly truthful if disconnected._

“And this John Doe, where is he now? You’ve kept his chamber; is he on this ship as well?”

Zinaida wondered briefly why Khan was so bent on knowing. A man like him was bound to have enemies of his own kind, ones he very likely left behind in the past. Was he afraid that some of them survived to this day?

_Oh John, what connected you to this man? What could possibly make someone think that you could have saved him?_

Zinaida looked at Khan again, lost in her thoughts, barely registering his repeated question. She dived in the depths of those pale eyes, searching for something human; something that would remind her of John–

And then, suddenly, she knew. Perhaps it was the pain caused by the severance of her bond with Jedda that has made her extraordinarily perceptive; but she looked at Khan and she knew that this man, too, was only a half.

She remembered John’s warmth and she could see that it was exactly what Khan was missing.

The shadows around the edges of her vision drew nearer. She could see their faces. One of them smiled at her, she smiled back. _In a while, Jedda._

A young voice from the intercom broke in: _Bridge to Khan. Sir, the Enterprise is within visual contact, demanding communication._

“Let them eat static!” Khan shouted. He wasn’t finished here.

“You think you’re perfect,” she whispered.

“I am,” Khan blinked, surprised by the change in her. She shook her head, slowly.

“You’re not. You want something; so essential that you forbade yourself even to think about it, lest it hurt.”

Khan leaned very close, barring his teeth, voice positively thunderous: “ _Who_ was in the chamber?!”

Zinaida didn’t flinch. Her fine Deltan ears caught a distant sound, too faint even for the enhanced human’s hearing: the buzz of a transporter beam. _Good luck, John._

“You’re a man in need of redemption,” she summoned all her strength. “I’m not going to spoil it for you.”

She closed her eyes and embraced the shadows.  
.  
.  
.  
.tbc  



	10. The Clash

Chapter 10 - **The Clash**

Wherein I and my wonderful beta [](http://rranne.livejournal.com/profile)[**rranne**](http://rranne.livejournal.com/) are playing the game 'Spot the Sherlock reference'.   
.  
.  
.  
  
Materializing from the transporter beam felt like being flayed alive, only in reverse. John doubled over and braced his hands against his knees, breathing consciously against the eviscerating pain, till the rise of bile from his stomach subsided again, and he congratulated himself– he made it without falling to the ground this time.

That’s why he thought it highly unfair when his knees hit the floor the very next moment, the weight of the guard pinning him down, his windpipe squeezed in a perfect headlock. John lifted his eyes to the sight of a phaser aimed at him by another guard; the screens all around them flaring with intruder red alert. From behind the imposingly broad shoulders of the guard, a number of people gaped at him– with the honorable exception of a Vulcan in the Captain’s seat, whose surprise of beholding a stranger, suddenly materialized in the middle of the bridge, was betrayed only by the way his eyebrows almost touched his hairline.

John knew there was not much time for formalities. He raised his hands in the universal token of surrender and engaged his most convictive tone: “Shields. Raise them. Now.”

“And who exactly–” a broad-faced man with three pips on his sleeve began. _This must be the Admiral._

“You’re Kirk?” John didn’t wait for the affirmative. “Reliant’s been taken over by a group of prisoners we’ve found on Ceti Alpha Five. Their leader’s called–”

“Khan,” Kirk finished for him, momentarily frozen. Then his eyes widened and he shouted – “Shields up, Mr. Chekov!” – in the same moment when the tactical officer exclaimed: “Sir, Reliant’s raised her shields – they’re firing on us!”

“Brace for impact,” John heard the remarkably calm voice of the Captain, knowing that the shields wouldn’t be at their full capacity in time for the blast. He shook off the guard and gripped the armrest of the nearest chair. He only hoped that his calculation of Khan’s intentions was right– that the man would want to deal with Kirk in person; that he would avoid a direct strike on the bridge.

The attack was devastating. The sheer energy of Reliant’s phasers sank its teeth into the unprotected body of the Enterprise, hitting the secondary hull first; the energy heart of the ship. Second strike left a scorched line of destruction along the deflectors and main phasers. Out of the cacophony of reports on the bridge, John could make out that the aim was purposeful– it rendered the Enterprise naked, powerless, and defenceless. Their shields, barely a half-way up when the attack came, wavered and dropped.

When the inertia dampers started up again and everything has calmed down a little, the communication officer looked up from her console: “Sir, it’s Reliant. They want a word with us.”

Kirk’s hands balled into fists. The Vulcan stood up from his seat, smoothing his uniform to match his voice as he asked: “Admiral? Should I address him?”

Kirk set his mouth thin. “No, Mr. Spock. We all know who he wants. Open a channel, Uhura; put the bastard on the screen.”

John crouched in the furthest corner of the bridge, hiding from the viewscreen line of sight, once again glad that nobody was noticing him. When the all-too-familiar face appeared, John was fairly sure Khan couldn’t see him.   

“Kirk, my old friend.” Khan’s smile was bleeding cold. “You don’t seem much surprised. Tell me; what gave me away? What premonition made you to raise your shields – even if too late – against an innocent looking ship of your own Fleet?”

John swore inwardly and shook his head desperately, gesturing so that they wouldn’t give him away. Kirk seemed to forget him entirely, his blazing eyes transfixed on the screen; Spock, instead, shot him an inquiring glance. An expression of revelation flew across his features, but he hid it quickly. He craned his neck inconspicuously to check on the sensor readings and then he spoke: “The Miranda class specifications require a crew of twenty five. The discovery of twenty _seven_ humans aboard, along with two not-long dead bodies, was instantly suspicious.”

 _The Vulcans do not lie, yeah?_ John grinned despite the stress of the situation as both commanding officers locked eyes for a second – a question and a reply; silent understanding born through the years of companionship. John felt a sharp pang of ache when he remembered the same easy familiarity that once was between him and Sherlock.

“Where is Reliant’s crew?” Kirk barked out in an attempt to dominate the conversation.

“Oh, ever the conscientious commander,” Khan leaned back in his seat. “I can ease your worry, Admiral. With the exception of the foolishly impetuous Captain Terrell, the rest of his crew is currently enjoying the beauties of the deserted sand-heap of a planet you’ve left us on–”

“Ceti Alpha Five wasn’t a desert planet! There was life, a fair chance–”

“It was a death sentence!” Khan shouted. “Six months after we were left there, a comet exploded in our atmosphere, laying everything waste. Forty six men and women, Kirk, forty six members of my family died in your name.”

“That wasn’t my intention! How could I–”

“ _Yes_. How could you have known? Perhaps if you had checked the entire planetary system; you could have seen the comet, yet months away, on a collision course. It was a mistake, to omit the greater picture. And for this mistake, for this omission, you shall be answerable.”

Kirk gritted his teeth. Damage reports rolled on the side bar of the screen, giving him very little ground to stand upon. John noticed there were no casualties, so far. Kirk glared at Khan as if he would pluck the liver out of his body, if there were any.

“What do you want?” Kirk admitted his defeat finally, as if the answer wasn’t already known to him.

“A very unbalanced exchange,” Khan spiced his voice with nonchalant amusement. “Your life for the four hundred lives of your crew, which are currently at my mercy. Your death for the forty six deaths of my people, buried underneath the sand dunes of Ceti Alpha Five. You see, Admiral, I am being generous.”

“Khan, how do I know you’ll keep your word?” Kirk asked.

“Oh, I’ve given you no word to keep, Admiral. In my judgment, you simply have no alternative.”

Once again, Spock looked at Kirk; a message –non-transmittable through the communication screen– in his eyes. Kirk understood the hint. “Give me five minutes, Khan.”

Khan laughed. “What for, Admiral? To ascertain for yourself that there really is no way out of this? You could have trusted me. But I am still generous. You shall have your moment of privacy.”

“It is much appreciated,” Kirk replied more brusquely than a dying man should and Khan’s face disappeared from the screen.

“What is it, Spock?” The Vulcan already moved to stand behind the tactical console, scrolling through the database.

“Reliant is a Federation vessel. We can use their prefix-code to establish a remote control over the ship. We will be able to lower their shields before they override our control manually.”

“Bridge to engine room,” Kirk hit the intercom button next to the Captain’s seat, “Scotty, we need power for the phasers. How much can you give me?”

“The energizer’s bypassed like a Christmas tree,” an agitated voice came through the speaker, “so you better not push it.”

“Mr. Sulu, lock phasers on target and await my command,” Kirk addressed the helmsman, who nodded: “Phasers locked, sir.”

From his corner, John watched the effortless coordination of this crew, their actions slotting together like clockwork. It occurred to him that these people must have faced the no-win scenario more than a healthy number of times in the past.

*

Khan ordered Joachim to open the hailing frequency again. “Your five minutes are up, Admiral. Now I expect you to–”

“Our shields are dropping!” Joachim exclaimed in dismay as if he couldn’t believe his own eyes.

“Then raise them!”

Joachim tried and tried again, to no effect. “I can’t!” His fist pounded on the console. Khan’s eyes went glassy with concentration. “The override...the controls must be somewhe–”

He didn’t get to finish his thought as the blast shattered his ship, all words drowned in the screeching of the strained material and frantic wailing of the computer alarm.

When everything stilled again, Joachim was the first to speak.

“Shields are gone, sir. Our weapons, too.”

Khan narrowed his eyes on the tactical screen. “Then why is he not firing? Why doesn’t he just _end_ us?”

“Perhaps he’s got no power left,” Joachim hazarded. “If so, we are in a stalemate.”

*

“We tried it once your way, Khan; are you game for a rematch?” Kirk poured as much mockery in his words as he could. “Now you can’t harm my ship. Khan, I’m laughing at your ‘superior intellect.’”

Khan braced himself in the command seat, knuckles white. His voice, though, came out controlled, rumbling deep with dangerous determination, “you think you’ve cheated death again? No, my old friend. From hell’s heart, I stab at thee– for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee!”

He drew a steadying breath. “This is my game, and I’ll watch _you_ dance. I sincerely hope that your ship still manages a decent speed, because you have to follow me to Ceti Alpha Five now.”

“And why would I do that?” Kirk folded his arms.

“I happen to have a very interesting thing in my hands – the Genesis device. Now, as you have deprived me of my intended form of revenge, I will take consolation in returning back to my prison planet and performing a _genesis_ upon it.”

Khan smiled when he saw the totally blank look on Kirk’s face.

“It would, of course, mean an unfortunate end for the crew I left there. Unless you...oh, Admiral, you already know the bargain. It is the same – your life for a crew. It almost becomes _boring_ , when you think of it.”

The Reliant began to retreat.  “As long as I have Genesis...” Khan’s voice suddenly became almost sing-song, “I’ve got you!”

John’s jaw dropped as he recognized the impression. He remembered that particular intonation all too well from the night at the pool.

 _He’s projecting Moriarty into Kirk. Jesus._ _He’s merging the two together; as Sherlock, he only ever had one enemy worth the effort; now, with Kirk, his mind takes the well-trodden path. He subconsciously blames Kirk not only for the deaths of his people, but also –as Moriarty– for taking his friends from him; for forcing him to abandon them in order to save them. That’s why now, with only one enemy to face, he still feels twice as much hate._

John pressed his palms to his temples. _It means that Mycroft was right_. Sherlock wasn’t dead. He was buried deep inside Khan, in some room that even Khan didn’t dare to enter, and John only hoped that he still possessed the key.

“Khan,” Kirk exclaimed, “what is Genesis?”

“I’m sure you find the answer in the Federation classified archives,” Khan responded amusedly, his hand already hovering above the communication panel. “Do your research.”

The screen faded. Kirk turned to Spock with the most puzzled expression. “What the hell _is_ Genesis?”

John knew a good cue when it fell to his lap. “It’s a terraforming device,” he responded. “The life project of Doctors March and Madison that puts into praxis their theory on sub-atomic particles. Basically, it’s a wave that transforms all matter within its reach into a new matrix, programmed within the device. Take a dead planet and you have a paradise. Take one where life already exists...”

“It would destroy such life in favour of its new matrix,” Spock finished for him. “Fascinating.”

The bridge crew looked at John questioningly. Surrounded with so many people in uniforms, he squared his shoulders unconsciously.

“John Watson. Captain John Watson,” he added for the sake of smugness, already regretting the moment he would have to admit that he’s no starship commander.

“Well, who exactly are you, Captain?” Kirk went back to his very first question.

“It would seem, sir,” John considered his words carefully, “that I am the ace up your sleeve in this game.”  
.  
.  
.  
.tbc

 


	11. The Plans

Reliant flew unevenly, shudders spreading through her construction at every sudden change of velocity, caused by the fitful working of the engine core. Khan’s crew worked on the repairs, guided by manuals and intuition. Khan sat in the Captain’s private cabin, eyes fixed on the screen showing the sensor readings. Enterprise was slower and limped behind them stubbornly, maintaining the pursuit.  _Good_.  
  
“Khan,” Joachim’s voice came from the door, unsure and with a pleading edge. “You know we are all with you. But, consider this: we have a ship. Damaged, yes, but we still can maintain full impulse power and we can go where we will. You have defeated Kirk’s plans, isn’t it better to let him live with the knowledge?”  
  
“He tasks me,” Khan whispered absentmindedly, then he repeated, louder: “He tasks me and I shall have him! How can you not understand?”  
  
“I do,” Joachim answered, stepping a bit closer. “They were my brothers and sisters, who died on Ceti Alpha Five. I mourn them as much as you do.”  
  
“Then you should want to avenge them as much as I do,” Khan didn’t tear his eyes from the screen.  
  
Joachim came closer still. “I think they wouldn’t want you to avenge them. They would want you to  _lead_ us– to life, to future. Not to waste yourself in bringing about one more unnecessary death.”  
  
Khan closed his eyes for a moment, his expression serene.  
  
“You know, Joachim, what I did every time we buried another one of our friends? Every time, the first clod of earth I was about to throw into the grave, I put aside, and I kept it. I swore an oath that one day I shall throw this earth into the grave of James T. Kirk.”  
  
“And I swear to you now,” Khan continued, standing up and putting a hand on Joachim’s shoulder, “I swear I’ll do nothing to bring any of you into danger. This evening of scores is between me and him only. I don’t want to share the universe with him; but do you really think, Joachim, that he’d stand any chance against me?”  
  
Joachim smiled involuntarily – it was true; Kirk stood no chance against Khan. A middle-aged man living a sheltered life of bureaucracy against an enhanced human in his prime, hardened by the years spent in fight for survival. No chance at all.  
  
“You  _are_  superior,” Joachim drew a breath and added warningly, “but he’s  _very_  cunning.”  
  
“And you are my most loyal companion,” Khan looked at him approvingly. “Don’t worry, Joachim. I’ll deal with Kirk and then we can go anywhere you fancy. My thoughts are of death and of the past at this moment, but I trust you to take care of life and the future.”  
  
*  
  
Khan’s conditions were simple; he delivered them from the planet surface where he landed one of Reliant’s shuttles – the Genesis device was far too dangerous to beam. Kirk should beam aboard the Botany Bay; once there, the Enterprise would be allowed to beam away Reliant’s crew, leaving the playground free.  
  
 _“Khan, the Enterprise has arrived. They claim their transporter isn’t working; not enough energy left.”_  
  
“I’m sure that they have a shuttle large enough to squeeze twenty-four people in it,” Khan answered impassively. He would just wait a little longer. After all, revenge is a dish that is best served cold.  
  
He caressed the metal surface of the device, admiring its finery. Doctors March and Madison would be proud to see it launched here, defeating the premature death of this planet and turning it into a garden again. Khan pushed several buttons, setting a delayed activation. From what Dr. Madison told him earlier, he knew that once started, the sequence couldn’t be reverted. However, there was a limited amount of time when the device checked and mapped its target; on a planetary scale, the electromagnetic field thus generated would jam the Reliant’s sensors, making it impossible for them to locate the faint signal of his life functions in order to beam him up. Should the encounter between him and Kirk get unpredictably longer, Khan had a small communicator, able to emit a sharp signal, attached to his waist. One call and Joachim would beam him to safety.  
  
*  
  
Aboard the Galileo, the largest of Enterprise’s shuttles, John Watson leaned comfortably into the back of his chair, grateful beyond measure that Kirk has agreed to this little ploy of his – claiming the transporter out of order. He wasn’t sure if he could confront Khan successfully when feeling as if he was freshly disemboweled. In the pilot seat, Kirk tapped his fingers on the console.  
  
They went over the plan John came up with again; John making Kirk memorize the words he needed him to use. He wasn’t sure Kirk would be any good in doing accents, but it didn’t matter. Sherlock’s mind worked in letters, fast-scrolling headlines and nanosecond-flashing smallprint; if anything could trigger the right memories, it would be the words, not the voice that spoke them.  
  
“Why are you doing this?” Kirk asked after a pause as if silence between them was something awkward. Perhaps it was.   
  
“You think I shouldn’t be?” John looked up. He knew what Kirk really meant with his question – he wasn’t asking why John was trying to help Kirk. “You think I shouldn’t be trying to save  _him_?”  
  
Kirk cleared his throat. “Khan is a criminal.” He looked away. “My friend...a father I never had...Christopher Pike...dead by Khan’s hand.”  Kirk’s jaw was set firm. “Some people just don’t deserve to be saved.”  
  
“Even he deserves someone to try,” John replied quietly.  
  
 _It could have been Khan,_  John thought, _one of the forty-six who didn’t make it. I could have been woken up to a world where Sherlock was nothing but an unnamed grave on a deserted planet. Because of this man’s mistake._  
  
“Why are  _you_  doing this?” John asked. “You could have told me to back off. Go down there, get yourself killed, end of story.”  
  
Kirk was still looking away.  
  
“You feel guilty,” John realised. “A bit. But you do. For what happened to them.”  
  
Kirk checked the navigation screen before he spoke again. “I suppose I do. I should have...I just didn’t want to see him again. But I could have  _ordered_  someone to check. Damn it. I think that I had this coming all along. I doubt there is a prison that could hold Khan for long.”  
  
John huffed out a breath. “Sherlock knew how to pick locks. And he broke every password you could invent.”  
  
Kirk shot him a look him out of a corner of his eye. “What was he like?”  
  
“Genius.” John shrugged, then he began to enumerate on his fingers: “And also obsessive, possessive, manipulative, abusive – he never hesitated to take advantage of anyone – ruthless, reckless–”  
  
“Are you sure that the augmentation has actually  _improved_  him?” Kirk broke in, grinning.  
  
“He was a creature of extremes. He didn’t just talk, he  _fired_  the words. Then he went on for days with the silent treatment when he sulked.” John realised that he hadn’t talked about Sherlock so much in all those years since the  _Fall._    
  
“He was a nightmare of a friend. And then he went and threw himself off a building to save my life.” John paused a little, letting the penny drop.  
  
“No one would believe he had that in him. He used to keep everyone at arm’s length. Rude, arrogant, untouchable. So that nobody even wanted to know what was beneath that facade.”  
  
“Was there anything?” Kirk asked, not entirely convinced.  
  
It was John's turn to look away, when he answered: "I was."  
  
  
*  
  
The sound of the howling wind from outside covered any noises that the shuttle had made when lifting off – slightly overloaded but still maneuverable.  _They are gone and safe, by now_. Kirk’s steps echoed on the floor of Botany Bay, each hollow  _thrump_  feeling like a countdown on his remaining time.  
  
In the large cargo bay stood the carcass of scaffolding that once housed seventy three cryotubes; the equipment long gone, gathering dust in some Federation archive. The air was humid and smelled of stale water; long shelves lined the walls, laden with cans and hand-made clay containers full of greenery.  _They had to feed somehow; hunting whatever survived on the surface, growing the little they could to avoid the scurvy._  
  
“Welcome to Hell, Admiral.” The tall figure walked through the door on the other side.  
  
“I think we are past the formalities, Khan,” Kirk began to circle the room, maintaining the distance between the two. “You called me Jim once; it made me wonder why.”  
  
“Oh, that was just a slip, Admiral,” Khan drawled the last word. “I like to remind you of the responsibility you have. It makes you so compliant.”  
  
“Do you know what happens when you kill me? What happens to you?”  
  
“Oh, let me guess: The entire Starfleet would hurl itself at me and my people.” Khan seemed bored by the idea. “That is, if they had time. This is such a private spot – by the time the first Federation ship arrives here, we shall be deep in the Neutral Zone. Your threats are toothless, Admiral.”  
  
Kirk shook his head, daring few steps closer.  
  
“They would never give you up. And they won’t just kill you - they’ll  _burn_  you.”  
  
Khan’s slow pacing wavered momentarily. His eyes narrowed and his expression became strange – as if he was listening to a music piece and suddenly noticed a note off key.  _It works_ , Kirk thought and continued, giving Khan no time to collect himself: “They would burn the  _heart_  out of you...though I have been reliably informed that you–”  
  
“Don’t have one,” Khan finished as if in haze. He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again, they  _burned_.  
  
That was all the warning Kirk was going to get.  
  
In a blink of an eye he found himself tackled to the ground, wind knocked out of him– he didn’t even see Khan move when he suddenly felt inhumanly strong fingers locked round his neck, lifting him up, the usually calm and haughty face contorted with rage only inches from his own.  
  
“I wanted to end you quickly, but it can still hurt. Who told you this?!”  
  
Kirk tried to get a word out but the grip was too strong; Khan didn’t seem to notice that as his fingers tightened even more, sending black dots dancing before Kirk’s eyes.  
  
“ _Who told you this?!_ ”  
  
“If you really don’t know,” John stepped through the door, “then you’re an idiot.”  
.  
.  
.  
.tbc


	12. The Fight

Khan let Kirk’s half-unconscious body fold on the ground as he spun around and froze on the spot, staring. John, too, stopped where he was; the light of the improvised garden falling on his face, highlighting every contour.  
  
“John Watson is dead. Over two hundred years,” Khan bit on the words as if he could revise the reality according to what he believed.  
  
“Look who’s speaking.” John didn’t want to feed the feeling of betrayal brought by the knowledge that Sherlock faked his death and never let him know– he was skating on thin ice right there, no need for emotional outbursts. He only said: “At least,  _I_  attended  _your_  funeral.”  
  
On the floor, Kirk came to his senses and rolled away quickly to put some distance between him and Khan again. Khan let him; all his attention was focussed on John.  
  
“How did you...oh. The chamber on Reliant.”  
  
“That blasted thing nearly killed me,” John said with emphasis. Then he let out a short laugh. “Anyway, when you found it, I was mortified. Thought you’d catch me right there. Your deductions are going rusty, Sherlock.”  
  
“I’m not the man you used to know,” Khan corrected him, an undertone of warning rolling deep in his voice. John willed himself to ignore the way it made the hair on his neck stand on end.  
  
“Of course not. The one I know used to protect people, not to leave a line of dead bodies in his track.”  
  
“Oh John,” it was Khan’s turn to laugh and this time John shuddered visibly at the coldness of it, “you’re making people into heroes again. You have  _no idea_  what he left in his tracks before he became me.”  
  
Khan was now approaching him, slow and measured steps bringing him closer, and John had to gather all his bravery... _stupidity, stupidity, this was insanely stupid idea, whose idea was that?..._ not to turn on his heel and run.  
  
“I know what you had to do.” John didn’t know, really, Mycroft never told him any details on Sherlock’s whereabouts after his faked suicide, but he had his suspicions. “What you had to do to protect your friends.”  
  
“I have never done anything more than protect my friends, and for that we were condemned to a slow, horrible death!”  
  
“Sherlock,  _now_  you’re not protecting anyone. You don’t have to do this.” John noticed the way the corners of Khan’s mouth turned slightly down upon hearing his old name.  _Was it displeasure or regret?_  
  
Khan stopped a couple of feet away from him; his eyes, icily blue, all-seeing as ever, burning with something incomprehensible, drank in John’s face– such a contrast to the detached, dismissive tone of his words that John decided at once to believe the eyes instead of the voice.  
  
“You don’t understand. You’ve never lost–”  
  
“I bloody well  _have_!” There it was– the outburst he tried to avoid.  _Damn it, but it felt so good._  
  
 _There is no way one could describe the hell you’re going through when you can’t even say aloud that your best friend... is…_  John gave up on words, knowing how well Sherlock knew how to read him, letting his face express all he wanted to say.  
  
The answering pain on the so different, but still familiar, face nearly broke his heart– but it gave him hope, too.  
  
“I didn’t know,” Khan– no, Sherlock– whispered. “I didn’t know you’d be affected that much. I gave you a way out.”  
  
“The ‘I’m a fake’ bullshit? Did you really, for one second, think that I would believe it?” John laughed over the bitter lump in his throat. “For a genius, you can be so fucking  _clueless_.”  
  
Khan moved again; now he stood close – not so close that John would have to tilt his head up to look him in the eyes, but close enough to reach out and touch. “I wanted to get back to you.” One fingertip, roughened with years of hard manual work, traced the line of John’s short hair above his forehead.  _There were more of the grey ones than Sherlock would have remembered._  
  
“You still can,” John swallowed, resisting the urge to grab the hand and pull the man into a long overdue embrace. It was a crucial moment – something stretched almost tangibly between them, unnamed and unfathomable, and John searched the eyes for an answer–  
  
Then it shattered and broke. Khan withdrew his hand and slowly shook his head, diverting his gaze from John’s dismayed face: “Everything’s different now. You want to know what happened? I’ll tell you.”  
  
John didn’t know how was it possible to love and hate the same voice at the same time.  
  
“They created us to fight for them– and when we ceased to fit into the grand scheme of things, they condemned us as criminals and expelled us into exile. Your world, John, doesn’t deserve us.” Khan turned away and began to walk over to Kirk, who took a few wary steps back.  
  
“Let him go.” His plan failed, but John was determined to play the game till the end– even if it involved breaking some bones.  _Probably his own._  
  
“What did you expect, John?” Khan laughed at the audible edge of desperation in John’s plea. “You’ve sided with my enemy. Did you really think I would give him up just because of  _you_?”  
  
“Yes,” John forced his voice to calmness. “If you wouldn’t, then you jumped off that roof for  _nothing_.”  
  
The last word hit Khan like a slap, bringing him to a grinding halt.  
  
"How do you  _dare_ ," he hissed. "I've had enough of people using my friends against me. This won't work on me, Jo–"   
  
Everybody froze when the high-pitched buzz from the adjacent room split the air. Low drumming filled John's ears and he felt a crawl of tickling sensation all over his skin – the hair on the back of his hands stood up, charged with static.   
  
"You've set it off," John exhaled incredulously, "what were you thinking, you lunatic!"  
  
Khan didn't notice him anymore. "I'm afraid our lovely encounter has come to an end," he drawled at the Admiral instead, covering the distance between them in one incredibly long jump and launching a blow on Kirk's head.   
  
Kirk parried the attack by dodging swiftly to the side – the man had more combat agility than appeared – and countered with a rapid series of punches in the gut meant to throw Khan off-balance; no one knew better than Kirk that the blunt force of human hands could do very little harm to an enhanced human body. Khan, indeed, stumbled one step back – only to trip Kirk up with a swinging kick. Long arm hauled Kirk by the neck, trapping one of his hands under the combined weight of their bodies; Khan pressed the other painfully into the floor, straddling him and closing his free hand round Kirk's throat again. Kirk tried to struggle, trashing his legs in search for leverage, but Khan's grip was inescapable. His eyes blazed with fierce determination and Kirk's vision began to blur at the edges, the loud thrumming of blood in his ears drowning out every sound except for--  
  
"Let him go!" The crushing weight was suddenly removed from his chest, the hand on his neck gone, as John knocked Khan down on the floor with all the force of his compact body. Khan rolled over and sprang to his feet, not losing a second– but John didn't attack him further. He stayed where he was, crouched beside Kirk, and opened his fist.   
  
In his palm lay the small communicator that John had snatched from Khan's waist. He opened it, activating the signal, and pressed it to Kirk's side, rolling away from the range of the beam.   
  
Kirk vanished in the cloud of flickering sparks.  
.  
.  
.tbc


	13. The Fall

 

 _What have you done?_  

Khan didn’t say it aloud but the dismay written all over his features spoke clearly enough. He sagged on the floor ungraciously, covering his face. John stood up, dusting his clothes, and came over to kneel before the horror-stricken man. He wasn’t afraid of him anymore. For the split-second when their eyes met – John’s determined as he activated the call and Khan’s wide and frozen in surprise – John knew that he’s got his friend back. 

“John,” it was Sherlock’s old voice all over again, “I was going to give that communicator to you...I was going to let you beam out of here...how could you _do_ that?” 

“You fucking well know how,” John smiled at the crushed man before him, giddy with relief despite the hopelessness of their situation. “It’s what we do. What we always did. Saving the innocent.” 

He took the face of his friend in both hands, lifting it up, forcing Khan to look him in the eyes. “I didn’t sleep frozen like a fucking bag of peas for nearly three hundred years only to watch you saving my life again. And, just for the record, I _hate_ transporters.”  

“I have a shuttle outside,” Khan found his tongue, eyes going blank for a moment – _was he calculating the remaining time?_ – before he gritted his teeth and stood up briskly: “Let’s go. Hurry.” 

“We’re not going to make it,” John remarked almost casually, not pretending to be fooled. Khan only swallowed and quickened his pace; the walls around them vibrating with energy that made the air feel crackling in their mouths. At the door, Khan threw a large cloak over both of them; running with their heads low against the whirling sand they reached the shuttle. John shut the door behind them and sealed it, Khan already busy over the starting sequence. 

 _It was all senseless, really._ John could do his math; he knew enough about the Genesis device and the maximum speed of Reliant’s shuttles to be damn certain that they would never make it past the stratosphere in time to escape the wave. The ships on the orbit were safe – the wave needed matter to propagate, it didn’t reach into free space – but even the thin air in the outer edges of the atmosphere was solid enough to carry it on, transforming everything within its reach. They were going to die. 

 _At least, I don’t have to go to his funeral this time._ John found the thought ridiculously comforting.  

 

*

 

James Kirk gasped when the world became solid around him again; the back of his head hitting the platform with a painful _thud_.  _Wait, platform?_  

The dancing round lights above his head finally stopped and came into focus—he recognised that they, indeed, were the beam emitters, set into a hexagon pattern. He was in the transporter room. He rolled his head to the side to take a look at the rest of the room and his breath stopped. 

At least ten—no, twelve people surrounded him in a silent half-circle, waiting. One of them stood out among them; long, leonine hair around his remarkably appealing face, now shadowed with grim and severe expression. Kirk remembered him instantly; fifteen years hadn’t changed him much. Joachim, Khan’s favourite and second in command. 

 _That’s done it_ , Kirk thought as he slowly rose to his feet. At least, he’ll be facing his death standing. 

Joachim’s eyes rested on the communicator and Jim Kirk remembered the surprise move of John Watson; the way the man charged at Khan like a cannon ball, snatching the little gadget in the spur of the moment with the surest hand—there was more to Captain Watson that met the eye, Kirk finally understood that. Then it hit him, with whom Watson remained alone down there, and his heart clenched. 

“Khan said that this was between you and him alone,” Joachim spoke, at last. Kirk watched him warily.  _Don’t they know what happened down there? No, they don’t. They think I killed their leader._  

“Would you give me your word, Admiral; that no charges will be brought against us?” 

Joachim’s voice was calm and steady. Kirk nodded, his poker face on—he didn’t want to give away how bewildered he was by the whole turn of events. 

“Then we surrender,” Joachim said with grave finality. 

“I accept,” Kirk replied formally. The semi-circle parted before them, expecting Kirk to leave for the bridge and assume command of Reliant; Kirk jumped to the transporter console instead, checking on the sensor readings for any human signal from the surface.  _If there still was time…_  

The sensors were overloaded. With Genesis set off on the surface, nothing could be distinguished from the orbit. 

“You want to beam aboard the Enterprise,” Joachim misunderstood Kirk’s intentions, motioning him back to the platform and assuming the post behind the console. Kirk shot him a sidelong glance. 

“Are you quite sure you don’t want to…how should I put it:  _avenge_  your leader?” 

“I adored him,” Joachim’s eyes flared, “I would give my life for his any time,  _gladly_. But…there was some darkness in him – some emptiness, I never understood. His loyalty to us was unerring. Yet he failed to see, what we truly needed,” the young man acknowledged.   

“Whatever war crimes we did back on Earth, I think that we have served our sentences on Ceti Alpha Five. This spiral of injustice and revenge has to end, Admiral. Don’t you think, after all those years, that the time has come…for forgiveness?”   

“About time,” Kirk smiled and shook the hand Joachim was offering in a firm grip.

 

*

The shuttle engines strained in their sharp ascension. The air around them buzzed with electric charge, the force of the field generated by the Genesis almost splitting the molecules apart, but the shell of the shuttle worked like Faraday’s cage; they were safe inside. At least, before the wave would hit upon them and swallow them whole. Khan was bent over the pilot console, trying to redirect all available energy to the engines to push their maximum speed higher. John couldn’t help but admire the stubbornness with which Khan was fighting the inevitable. 

 _Three hundred years and three minutes and I think he’s brilliant again – like the old days._  

“She thought I was missing something.” John woke from his reverie to find out that his friend was watching him—talking to him, actually. 

“Sorry, who?” 

“The Deltan. She said I was missing something. She didn’t want to spoil the finding for me,” Khan—no, Sherlock, frowned. 

 _Dear Zinaida._  John smiled sadly. “Mycroft thought the same.” 

Sherlock drew his brows closer together as if he had problems recalling the name. Then he groaned. “I should have known. He was never going to give up on his  _little brother_.” 

“Master of abduction, yeah,” John made a wry face. 

“If only he had left you alone…you could have lived – a long life, not this—” 

“Not much of a life without you,” John interrupted him, squeezing his arm. Sherlock looked down, silent for a while, before he replied: “Not much of a life without  _you_ , John.” 

 

Deep below them, in the monotonous greyish desert lost in the never-ceasing whirls of sand storm, a single bright spot appeared. For a moment, it simply glowed, gathering its strength – then it burst out in a growing bubble of fire, spreading wide, soaring high, and consuming everything. Its speed appeared to be slow but John knew that they were deceived by the distance. 

“It’s beautiful,” Sherlock exhaled, his pale eyes mirroring the fiery glow. “God, I hate it so much.” 

John’s laughter was suddenly stopped short by the sharp  _beep_  of incoming communication. 

“ _Enterprise_ _to the shuttle,_ ” John recognised the calm and precise voice of Captain Spock,  _“we can see you on our sensors.”_

Sherlock’s eyes shot up, alert. “It’s the altitude,” he murmured. “The field’s weaker here.” 

John sprang to the communicator, keeping one eye on the approaching line of destruction where the old was transformed into the new. 

“Can you pull us out?” 

 _“The Genesis field is too strong. With two for the transport, we cannot guarantee that your signatures won’t intermix.”_ John shuddered when his memory promptly supplied the image of distorted, wretched abominations that sometimes emerged from the beam after fatal transporter failure. He really shouldn’t have studied the transporter functions into such details... 

_“You have to go one by one.”_

In the empty space in the back of the shuttle, a faintly flickering column of energy appeared. Enterprise couldn’t lock the beam precisely on their signal so they waited for them to jump in. John shot another glance out of the window – the wave was already at their heels. 

“Okay,” he forced his voice out, “move, Sherlock. Go!” _It’s my turn with the jumping off the roof, anyway._  

Sherlock grabbed him by the shoulders in a desperate hug, and for one second John stared into the deep eyes, wanting to tell him, _it’s all right, just go–_  

–when he felt a sharp pain on his forehead – his head jerked back with the force of the blow – and his world went dark before he realised what happened. 

Sherlock caught the unconscious body of his friend and lifted it off the ground effortlessly, covering the distance to the beam in two long strides and shoving the body in none too gently. He watched it disappear, being carried away to safety. It was the last thing he saw in his life before the wave caught up with the shuttle and everything turned into white nothingness.

 

*

 

John Watson and Leonard McCoy stood in the day room of the Enterprise, now turned into an improvised mortuary. The bodies of the last two members of the Genesis team were laying under white sheets, waiting to be shipped to their homeworlds. John lifted the corner of the sheet from Zinaida’s face, unbearably beautiful even in dead. 

McCoy cleared his throat. “I couldn’t find any cause of death.” 

“The Deltans can will themselves to die,” John replied flatly. “When their...partner...is gone.” 

 _I’d have liked you to teach me how to do it_ , he thought as he stooped to kiss the cold forehead. 

“You should have let me sleep, Zinaida,” he whispered, the grief he had almost forgotten burning in his chest with renewed intensity. “I’ve failed.” 

“I don’t think so,” McCoy shook his head, sad, knowing smile softening his face. “You’ve saved him – from himself.”

 .

.

.TBC


	14. The Rise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end, my friends. The last chapter I reserve for the amazing cover my unbeatable beta rranne made for me - we only have to sort out the details. Thanks to you all who stayed with me through this!

“It’s got even the deserts,” Kirk observed, face almost pressed against the window. Ceti Alpha Five rotated slowly and peacefully beneath them, its new surface unfolding before their eyes, surprising them again and again.  
  
“Del always voted for the diversity,” John explained. “He made Zinaida pull an all-nighter more than once just to calculate the exact area needed to keep the meridian atmospheric circulation stable.”  
  
Spock joined them, upright and reserved as ever in stark contrast to the unaffectedly enthusiastic Admiral. “No animal life forms?”  
  
“They weren’t in the matrix,” John shook his head. “The twins wanted the world ready for colonisation. And when I call them twins,” he added when he saw Spock’s eyebrow rise, “that was Zinaida’s favourite joke. Vance and Del-- they couldn’t be more different; tall and short, dark and fair, calm and wild…”  
  
 _Just like—_ he couldn’t even finish the thought, afraid that his voice would betray him. “They worked so well together. Del March was a proper genius, but so unsettled– he needed Vance to be the making of him,” he finished, turning back to the window.  
  
Reliant was put in running order with the help of technicians from the Enterprise and was already on her way to the docks. Joachim and his people agreed to stay aboard Enterprise for the time being; they chose Ceti Alpha Five for their homeworld again—not a prison this time, but an open harbour. A Federation base would be built here once a thorough exploration of the planet was completed.  
  
 _“Bridge to Admiral,”_  the velvety voice of the communication officer spoke.  
  
“Kirk here. What is it?”  
  
 _“Mr. Sulu here, sir. I get some very exceptional sensor readings from the planet surface.”_  
  
“In what way, exceptional?” Kirk frowned.  
  
 _“The signal response is definitely metallic, sir.”_  
  
Both officers turned to John expectantly. “Perhaps ore veins?” John offered the most likely explanation.  
  
“Ore wouldn’t appear as metal on the sensors,” Spock objected, as they were leaving the Captain’s cabin for the bridge. “With the exception of gold veins, of course.”  
  
“Seems that Mr. Sulu hit on a gold mine,” Kirk laughed. “On the screen with it, you lucky man.”  
  
“It would be the universe’s tiniest gold mine ever,” Hikaru Sulu pointed out. True; the area in question wasn’t more than few meters in diameter. The helmsman zoomed in the view and reduced the noise, sharpening the image so that they could see the odd signal source in detail.  
  
 _It looks familiar_ , John’s brow furrowed, catching the next thought in the same time as Spock said: “It’s a shuttle.”  
  
 _Reliant’s shuttle._  
  
John stood in the middle of the bridge, eyes transfixed on the screen, the world around him spinning in a slow motion. He couldn’t bring himself to react; the voices of the others coming as if through deep waters.  
  
“How could it escape destruction? We saw the wave taking it over,” Kirk asked suspiciously.  
  
“The field was weaker in the higher atmospheric strata,” Spock pondered the possibility. “Maybe the same applies for the wave. The shuttle could have been swept along with the turbulences and fallen back onto the surface.”  
  
 _It’s the altitude_ , John heard a voice in his head, and this time he noticed the alertness in it, the familiar hitch he’s heard hundreds of times, whenever Sherlock’s mind started to spurt down the path of evidence, leading to a revelation...  
  
“Check for life signs.” Kirk’s order was tinged with doubt. Human tissue was nothing compared to metal and composite, after all.  
  
 _He strove for the altitude; even when he knew we couldn’t escape into free space he still tried to get us as high as possible...why?_  John’s mind whirled. What was he missing? No one knew Genesis better than he; now, when the whole team was dead... _wait._  
  
 _Khan knew how to activate the device. Who taught him how to do it?_  
  
John remembered the look of absolute obedience in Madison’s face when he killed Jedda.  
  
 _Madison_ _told him everything about Genesis. How it worked, turning everything within its reach into a new matrix programmed specifically for the target–_  
  
There it was. Suddenly it all became clear.  
  
“...germs? Could be a contamination; the signal’s definitely too weak–”  
  
“I need a shuttle,” John heard his own hoarse voice, interrupting Sulu’s reports. “Please,” he added when he collected himself a bit. Kirk turned to him with something approaching pity.   
  
“John, don’t feed false hopes. No one could survive such a fall.”  
  
 _Doesn’t history really know any better than repeating itself?_ John thought exasperatedly when he replied with firm conviction: “He could.”  
  
 _*_  
  
“The son of a bitch.”  
  
That was all Kirk managed to say, leaning upon an unconscious, but definitely alive Khan Noonien Singh.  
  
McCoy wielded the medical scanner; John didn’t trust his own hands. They stood inside a surprisingly well-preserved shuttle – if it was for some gravitational shifts of the newly-reformatted planet or for the auto-pilot miraculously kicked-in, they would never know.  
  
“This doesn’t make sense,” McCoy scowled at the readings. “According to these scans, the man’s an embryo. He has the cellular age of zero generation – all his cells never divided. In any human, the mitosis doubles all the cells in a body about fifty times, and the DNA keeps track of this, but he’s like–”  
  
“ Re-made. Regenerated.” John touched one pale hand. All the roughened skin gone; even the callouses from violin play disappeared from the fingertips. No scars, no bruises.  
  
“The wave wasn’t strong enough to disintegrate him completely. His DNA repaired itself and the energy carried by the wave helped to revive him,” Spock offered a hypothesis.  
  
“I bet the bastard counted on it,” John felt like passing out any moment with exhilaration.  
  
“How did  _you_  know?” Kirk asked.  
  
“I didn’t,” John admitted. “But then I remembered that the Genesis was programmed for a dead world. Completely inhabitable, without an atmosphere. Well, there already was one here on Ceti Alpha Five; and the sand storms added a lot of solid particles into the air as well, so the wave exhausted itself too soon. He couldn’t have known for sure that he’d survive, but he tried it nonetheless.”  
  
“Body functions appear normal for a very deep sleep. Well, for a human. It seems that the wave has reversed all the changes they induced into him by the augmentation. But the brain–” McCoy frowned. “It’s  _tabula rasa_. Mental activity of a newborn.”  
  
“Oh great,” Kirk sighed, “just when I thought we’ve found the ideal Fountain of Youth.”  
  
“The regeneration erased all previously created synapses,” Spock remarked. “Fascinating. Despite the evidence of a breathing body, we can safely assume that Khan is dead.”  
  
“I’m sorry, John,” McCoy said uneasily. “This doesn’t look well for your friend either.”  
  
“I’d give him a chance,” John smiled, squeezing the limp hand with both of his. Long fingers wrapped faintly around his – an automatic reflex. “Everything that Sherlock made...well, Sherlock– his intelligence, his low empathy, his pretty much bipolar personality disorder – if the bouts of mad activity followed by days in depression were anything to go by – in short, all his maddening self – it’s written in his genes. Maybe he’ll become less of an arse when there won’t be anyone around to call him Freak on a regular basis, but I certainly won’t miss  _that._ ”  
  
“It could take years for him to learn everything he’ll need – the faculty of speech, to begin with,” McCoy warned him.   
  
“That makes two of us who need to go to school,” John shrugged. “And mind you, he’s a genius. You’ll be surprised how fast he can learn.”  
  
  
 **Epilogue**  
  
Three men walked down a private street in one of the historic quarters of London. The light drizzle was adding to the scenic atmosphere of the place, and neither of them minded getting a bit wet; the walk from the nearest transporter junction was but a short one.   
  
“This is highly illogical,” the Vulcan observed, pointing his eyebrows to the door numbers they were passing by. On their side of street stood a house number seventeen, followed duly by nineteen, and then – a newly attached plate with polished brass numbers 221B hung on the door to which they were heading.   
  
Black cab pulled to the kerb and John joined them, the name-badge from a medical conference still hanging loosely on his jacket.  
  
“Sorry, gentlemen,” he said, slightly out of breath, “the shuttle got delayed.”  
  
“What’s with you and transporters?” Kirk couldn’t hold back his curiosity.  
  
“I guess it’s psychosomatic. My stomach just doesn’t like the idea of having my atoms scattered back and forth in space,” John smiled apologetically.   
  
“You’re an old-fashioned boy,” McCoy said with heart-felt sympathy.  
  
A deafening  _bang_  followed by a rattle of broken glass carried from inside of the house, accompanied by a string of particularly colourful curses. John sighed. One of the things brought by John’s presence at close quarters during Sherlock’s speech development was that this new Sherlock could swear like a sailor.  
  
John ran up the steps, two at the time. The Enterprise trio followed him in a cautious distance.  
  
“John!” the deep voice reverberated through the walls as the man emerged from the living room door, hair wild, eyes shining. “Finally! I was in a mortal danger of getting  _bored_!” he added accusingly.  
  
“ _That_ would be a mortal danger for  _me_ ,” John countered. “Sherlock, we’ve got visitors. So whatever you’ve done to our flat, get it straight. Now.”


	15. The Cover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An amazing book-cover made by no-less amazing rranne. Thank you ever so much!

**Author's Note:**

> The most generous soul I've met in this fandom, ArianeDeVere, wrote an amazing Sherlock/Cabin Pressure crossover that actually made me do research into CP - and it was worth it. We wrote our things almost simultaneously and to her anxious eyes, it seemed that our stories bear substantial similarities - to my eyes, it wasn't so bad as she feared. You know, in Sherlock-verse, some things are pushing themselves upon our writing minds and it doesn't imply that we are inhabiting each other's head (dear Kres, if you're reading this, remember how I panicked upon reading Terms of Service when compared with my Vigil. Yes, I'm no better at this author's anxiety.)
> 
> Anyway, Ariane's story is just the right mix of bittersweetness and cleverity and DeVereian twistedness. You should not miss it. 
> 
>  
> 
> [Initially, he wanted to be a pilot](http://archiveofourown.org/works/947725?view_full_work=true)
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you, Ari, for kind words you have for me from the beginning and always!


End file.
